A Study on Estimation Method of Fill Factor for PV Power Generation System from its Output Power

Abstract

There are increasing needs to detect abnormal signs of PV power generation system more efficiently. In terms of this issue, fill factor (FF) value of PV array/module is one of important index of its soundness. This paper proposes a novel method to estimate the fill factor of a photovoltaic module (PV module) from its output power. In the firstly step of the proposed method, we estimate the temperature and irradiance from the voltage and current of PV array/module given by MPPT (maximum power point tracking) control of power conditioning system. In the second step, we calculate the estimated FF value taking fraction of the MPP current and voltage by the short circuit current and open circuit voltage reduced by estimated temperature and irradiance. The advantage of proposed method is convenience that we only need MPP current and voltage data and PV array/module specification.