Detection and Identification of Degradation Root Causes in a Photovoltaic Cell Based on Physical Modeling and Deep Learning

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are key renewable energy sources due to their ease of implementation, scalability, and global solar availability. Enhancing their lifespan and performance is vital for wider adoption. Identifying degradation root causes is essential for improving PV design and maintenance, thus extending lifespan. This paper proposes a hybrid fault diagnosis method combining a bond graph-based PV cell model with empirical degradation models to simulate faults, and a deep learning approach for root-cause detection. The experimentally validated model simulates degradation effects on measurable variables (voltage, current, ambient, and cell temperatures). The resulting dataset trains an Optimized Feed-Forward Neural Network (OFFNN), achieving 75.43% accuracy in multi-class classification, which effectively identifies degradation processes.