Advanced Photovoltaic Module Characterization: Using Image Transformers for Current–Voltage Curve Prediction From Electroluminescence Images

作者：Brandon Byford, Laura E. Boucheron, Bruce H. King, Jennifer L. Braid · 发表于：IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1109/jphotov.2025.3562931 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Photovoltaic System Optimization Techniques

Individual photovoltaic (PV) module health monitoring can be a daunting task for operation and maintenance of solar farms. Modules can be inspected through luminescence, thermal imaging, and current–voltage (I–V) curve analyzes for identification of damage and power loss.I–Vcurves provide easily interpretable data to determine module health as they directly provide electrical performance metrics. However, in order to obtain these curves, modules must be disconnected from the array and either removed to a solar simulator or characterized in situ with corrections for module temperature, the incident solar spectrum, and intensity. Luminescence or thermal images of a module are relatively easy to acquire in situ. Electroluminescence (EL) images highlight physical defects in the modules but do not provide easily interpretable features to correlate with electrical performance. This work presents a SWin transformer network to predictI–Vcurves for PV modules from their corresponding EL images. The predictedI–Vcurves allow the accurate prediction of the maximum power point (MPP), short-circuit current$I_{\textrm {sc}}$, and open-circuit voltage$V_{\textrm {oc}}$with a mean error less of than 1%. Comparing single diode model (SDM) parameters extracted from the predicted curves to those extracted from the true curves, the series resistance$R_{\textrm {s}}$demonstrates a mean error of 5.19%, and the photocurrent$I$a mean error of 0.197%. The shunt resistance$R_{\textrm {sh}}$and dark cur...