An innovative solar monitoring system has been developed. The system aimed at measuring the main parameters and characteristics of solar plants; collecting, diagnosing and processing data. The system communicates with the inverters, electrometers, metrological equipment and additional components of the photovoltaic arrays. The developed and constructed long working system is built on special data collecting technologies. At the generating plants, a special data logger BBbox is installed. The new monitoring system has been used to follow 65 solar plants in the Czech Republic and elsewhere for 175 MWp. As an example, we have selected 13 PV plants in this paper that are at least seven years old. The monitoring system contributes to quality management of plants, and it also provides data for scientific purposes. Production of electricity in the built PV plants reflects the expected values according to internationally used software PVGIS (version 5) during the previous seven years of operation. A comparison of important system parameters clearly shows the new solutions and benefits of the new Solarmon-2.0 monitoring system. Secured communications will increase data protection. A higher frequency of data saving allows higher accuracy of the mathematical models.

In broken photovoltaic (PV) cells the flow of electric current can be reduced in some places, which results in a lowered efficiency. In the present study, the damage of PV cells and panels was evaluated using three methods - electroluminescence, infrared camera imaging, and visual examination. The damage is detectable by all these methods which were presented and compared from the viewpoint of resolution, difficulty, and accuracy of monitoring the PV panels damage.