A review on maintenance strategies for PV systems

PV (PhotoVoltaic) systems gained popularity in being eco-friendly power supplies, reducing toxic gas emissions for energy production. Unfortunately it's been seen that efficiency reduction and output deficit are two common scenarios for PV systems when confronted with faulty events: this fact creates the crucially important need of knowing types of different possible faults and be able to detect them according to their ways of striking, timing and density of their leftovers. What comes after is fixing the damages, by preventing them from happening repeatedly and stop them from reaching the surface. Since knowing the fault without correcting it is counterproductive, maintenance strategies can reduce competencies of the system, accelerate operation time, and compensate the system in a way that prevents lowering in efficiency and consequently financial losses. This paper aims to present different schemes used in fault intervention categorized by preventive, corrective, predictive and urgent case faults maintenance methods with corresponding effects on environment. A critical comparison between different strategies is presented as well as an economical assessment of the maintenance costs and energy production increase. Each type is individually clarified to reveal what area of PV faults types it can withstand. With a recommendation on maintenance choice, an informative reference for researchers in the field is established to optimally maintain a sustainable PV system. [Display omitted] •Maintenance strategies aim to avoid the decrease in efficiency that is caused by potential faults.•Four types of maintenance strategies may be identified, preventive, predictive, corrective and urgent.•The study presents a review on the main developed techniques under each of the four maintenance categories.