Assessing the Impact of Inverter Failures on the Efficiency of Photovoltaic Generators

This paper assesses the impacts of failures in inverters on efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) generation systems. Six PV systems located in the northeastern region of Brazil are studied from January 2022 to July 2024, allowing the assessment of failure occurrence logs. In the proposed study, additional climatic data obtained from National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) system is taken into account, such as solar irradiation and temperature. By doing so, the expected PV generation system efficiency is validated and the impacts of inverter failures on their generation capacity are investigated. The obtained results show that some systems are more prone to issues due to inverter failures than others, particularly in response to grid availability and voltage quality. Furthermore, it is estimated that inverter failures can result in efficiency losses that can range from 2.55% to 14.67%. These results highlight the need for proactive solutions to detect inverter problems and for methodologies to enhance the PV generation capacity forecasting.