Photovoltaic system lifetime prediction using Petri networks method

Abstract

Photovoltaic modules and systems lifetime and availability are difficult to determine and not really well-known. This information is an important data to insure the installation performance of such a system and to prepare its recycling. The aim of this article is to present a methodology for the availability and lifetime evaluation of a photovoltaic system using the Petri networks method. Each component -module, wires and inverter -is detailed in Petri networks and several laws are used in order to estimate the reliability. Several guides (FIDES, MIL-HDBK-217 ...) allow determining the reliability of electronic components using collections of data. For photovoltaic modules, accelerated life testing are carried out for the evaluation of the lifetime which is described by a Weibull distribution. Results obtained show that Petri networks are very useful to simulate lifetime thanks to its intrinsic modularity.