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| Part | Fault type | Description |
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| DC | Mismatch faults | Partial shading [21, 31] | F1 | Presence of trees, overhead power lines, or nearby buildings |
| Uniform irradiance distribution [32] | F2 | Various irradiance intensity during the day |
| Soiling [23] | F3 | The bird droppings and dirt on the surface of a PV module |
| Snow covering and hot spot [33, 34] | F4 | The worst temperatures depending on the geographical location and different weather conditions |
| Earth fault | Upper ground fault [35, 36] | F5 | An unintentional path to ground with zero fault impedance occurs between the last two modules at PV string |
| Lower ground fault [35, 36] | F6 | An unintentional path to ground with zero fault impedance occurs between the 2nd and the 3rd two modules at PV string with large backfeed current |
| Arc fault | Series arc fault [37, 38] | F7 | An arc fault due to discontinuity in any of the current carrying conductors resulting from solder disjoint, cell damage, corrosion of connectors, rodent damage, abrasion from different sources |
| Parallel arc fault [37, 38] | F8 | Insulation breakdown in current carrying conductors |
| Line-to-line faults [19, 35] | F9 | An accidental short-circuit between two points in a string with different potentials |
| Bypass diode faults [39] | F10 | Short-circuit in case of incorrect connection |
| Degradation faults [40] | F11 | Yellowing and browning, delamination, bubbles in the solar module, cracks in cells, defects in antireflective coating and delamination over cells and interconnections lead to degradation and increasing of the internal series resistance |
| Bridging fault [19, 39] | F12 | Low- resistance connection between two points of different potential in string of module or cabling |
| Open-circuit fault [41] | F13 | Physical breakdown of panel-panel cables or joints, objects falling on PV panels, and loose termination of cables, plugging and unplugging connectors at junction boxes |
| MPPT faults [42, 43] | F14 | Problem in MPPT charge controllers |
| Cabling faults [44] | F15 | — |
|
| Ac | Inverter faults [45] | F16 | Failure of each component of inverter such as IGBTs, capacitors, and drive circuitry can result in inverter failure |
| Sudden natural disasters [46] | F17 | Total blackout due to Lightning, storm, and so forth |
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