Enhanced Fault Detection and Diagnosis in Photovoltaic Arrays Using a Hybrid NCA-CNN Model

The reliability and efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems are essential for sustainable energy production, requiring accurate fault detection to minimize energy losses. This study proposes a hybrid model integrating Neighborhood Components Analysis (NCA) with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to improve fault detection and diagnosis. Unlike Principal Component Analysis (PCA), which may compromise class relationships during feature extraction, NCA preserves these relationships, enhancing classification performance. The hybrid model combines NCA with CNN, a fundamental deep learning architecture, to enhance fault detection and diagnosis capabilities. The performance of the proposed NCA-CNN model was evaluated against other models. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that the NCA-CNN model outperforms existing methods, achieving 100% fault detection accuracy and 99% fault diagnosis accuracy. These findings underscore the model’s potential in improving PV system reliability and efficiency.