Availability Estimation of a Photovoltaic System

The availability estimation of photovoltaic (PV) systems has not been received great attention in the literature. Availability is important consideration in the life-cycle of such systems. This paper presents a methodology for estimating the availability of a photovoltaic system using Petri networks. Each component - module, wires and inverter - is detailed in Petri networks. In this paper, we simulate a photovoltaic system considering failure and repair distributions of its components. In this paper, we investigate and simulate a photovoltaic system using Petri nets considering failure and repair distributions of its components. Several types of failure modes of PV modules are implemented in the simulation. A study shows that the influence on the number of modules in series on the availability estimation is not significant. However, the mean time between failures decreases in increasing the number of series. The proposal methodology can be used for optimizing the performance of the installation of a PV system.