The demand of energy is increasing exponentially in large amount since last two decades. So, to meet the demand of energy, a large amount of alternate source of energy is required. Among all the non-conventional energy resources, the photovoltaic energy is pollution free source of energy and widely adopted. Therefore, the stability and reliability is the large aspect for solar photovoltaic systems (SPV). The unusual situations like two node connections of different voltages, line to ground connection, etc leads to reduction in electricity generation. The electrical characteristics of photovoltaic array like current-voltage and power-voltage curves are non-linear due to which it is some more difficult to detect and classify the faults on photovoltaic array. In this research work various faults are created on a 4×4 PV array of 1596 W in MATLAB/Simulink environment.

Keywords : Electrical Faults, Solar Photovoltaic, PV Array, Partial Shading, Line-line Faults.