Photovoltaic (PV) panels are becoming increasingly widespread in the domain of renewable energy, and thus, small efficiency gains can have massive effects. Anti-reflective and self-cleaning coatings enhance panel performance but degrade over time, requiring periodic reapplication. Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer a flexible and autonomous way to apply protective coatings more often and at lower cost compared to traditional manual coating methods. In this letter, we propose a quadcopter-based system, equipped with a liquid dispersion mechanism, designed to automate such tasks. The localization stack only uses onboard sensors, relying on visual-inertial odometry and the relative position of the PV panel detected with respect to the quadcopter. The control relies on a model-based controller that accounts for the ground effect and the mass decrease of the quadcopter during liquid dispersion. We validate the autonomy capabilities of our system through extensive indoor and outdoor experiments.

The prediction of solar irradiance enhances reliability in photovoltaic (PV) solar plant generation and grid integration. In Colombia, PV plants face penalties if energy production deviates beyond governmental thresholds from intraday market offers. This research employs Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Bidirectional-LSTM (Bi-LSTM) models, utilizing meteorological data from a PV plant in El Paso, Cesar, Colombia, to predict solar irradiance with a 6-hour horizon and 10-minute resolution. While Bi-LSTM showed superior performance, the LSTM model achieved comparable results with significantly reduced training time (6 hours versus 18 hours), making it computationally advantageous. The LSTM predictions were averaged to create an hourly resolution model, evaluated using Mean Absolute Error, Root-Mean-Square Error, Normalized Root-Mean-Square Error, and Mean Absolute Percentage Error metrics. Comparison with the Global Forecast System (GFS) revealed similar performance, with both models effectively capturing daily solar irradiance patterns. The forecast model integrates with an Object-Oriented power production model, enabling accurate energy offers in the intraday market while minimizing penalty costs.

The intermittent nature of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy, driven by variable weather, leads to power losses of 10-70% and an average energy production decrease of 25%. Accurate loss characterization and fault detection are crucial for reliable PV system performance and efficiency, integrating this data into control signal monitoring systems. Computational modeling of PV systems supports technological, economic, and performance analyses, but current models are often rigid, limiting advanced performance optimization and innovation. Conventional fault detection strategies are costly and often yield unreliable results due to complex data signal profiles. Artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning algorithms, offers improved fault detection by analyzing relationships between input parameters (e.g., meteorological and electrical) and output metrics (e.g., production). Once trained, these models can effectively identify faults by detecting deviations from expected performance. This research presents a computational model using the PVlib library in Python, incorporating a dynamic loss quantification algorithm that processes meteorological, operational, and technical data. An artificial neural network (ANN) trained on synthetic datasets with a five-minute resolution simulates real-world PV system faults. A dynamic threshold definition for fault detection is based on historical data from a PV system at Universidad de los Andes. Key contributions include: (i) a PV system model with a mean absolute error of 6.0% in daily energy estimation; (ii) dynamic loss quantification without specialized equipment; (iii) an AI-based algorithm for technical parameter estimation, avoiding special monitoring devices; and (iv) a fault detection model achieving 82.2% mean accuracy and 92.6% maximum accuracy.

Energy shortfall and electricity load shedding are the main problems for developing countries. The main causes are lack of management in the energy sector and the use of non-renewable energy sources. The improved energy management and use of renewable sources can be significant to resolve energy crisis. It is necessary to increase the use of renewable energy sources (RESs) to meet the increasing energy demand due to high prices of fossil-fuel based energy. Federated learning (FL) is the most emerging technique in the field of artificial intelligence. Federated learning helps to generate global model at server side by ensemble locally trained models at remote edges sites while preserving data privacy. The global model used to predict energy demand to satisfy the needs of consumers. In this article, we have proposed Blockchain based safe distributed ledger technology for transaction of data between prosumer and consumer to ensure their transparency, traceability and security. Furthermore, we have also proposed a Federated learning model to forecast the energy requirements of consumer and prosumer. Moreover, Blockchain has been used to store excess energy data from prosumer for better management of energy between prosumer and grid. Lastly, the experiment results revealed that renewable energy sources have produced better and comparable results to other non-renewable energy resources.

In the last few decades, solar panel cleaning robots (SPCR) have been widely used for sanitizing photovoltaic (PV) panels as an effective solution for ensuring PV efficiency. However, the dynamic load generated by the SPCR during operation might have a negative impact on PV panels. To reduce these effects, this paper presents the utilization of ANSYS software to simulate multiple scenarios involving the impact of SPCR on PV panels. The simulation scenarios provided in the paper are derived from the typical movements of SPCR observed during practical operations. The simulation results show the deformation process of PV panels, and a second-order polynomial is established to describe the deformed amplitude along the centerline of PV panels. This second-order polynomial contributes to the design process of a damper system for SPCR aiming to reduce the influence of SPCR on PV panels. Moreover, the experiments are conducted to examine the correlation between the results of the simulation and the experiment.

This paper presents an eXplainable Fault Detection and Diagnosis System (XFDDS) for incipient faults in PV panels. The XFDDS is a hybrid approach that combines the model-based and data-driven framework. Model-based FDD for PV panels lacks high fidelity models at low irradiance conditions for detecting incipient faults. To overcome this, a novel irradiance based three diode model (IB3DM) is proposed. It is a nine parameter model that provides higher accuracy even at low irradiance conditions, an important aspect for detecting incipient faults from noise. To exploit PV data, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) is used due to its ability to detecting incipient faults. Lack of explainability, feature variability for sample instances, and false alarms are challenges with data-driven FDD methods. These shortcomings are overcome by hybridization of XGBoost and IB3DM, and using eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques. To combine the XGBoost and IB3DM, a fault-signature metric is proposed that helps reducing false alarms and also trigger an explanation on detecting incipient faults. To provide explainability, an eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) application is developed. It uses the local interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME) framework and provides explanations on classifier outputs for data instances. These explanations help field engineers/technicians for performing troubleshooting and maintenance operations. The proposed XFDDS is illustrated using experiments on different PV technologies and our results demonstrate the perceived benefits.

Solar energy products and services developers and vendors continue to leverage the latest in distributed information and communications technology (ICT) in bids to drive further declines in the cost and boost the productivity of solar energy systems. Development and use of an expanding range of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and "Internet of Things" devices – wireless network sensors and "smart," network-connected inverters, meters and other devices – along with high-reliability wireless/mobile networking and cloud software- and infrastructure-as-a-service (SaaS and IaaS) platforms are enabling vendors and their customers to collect, analyze and act upon continuous streams of digital data and approach ideal maximum electrical power and energy production while coincidentally minimizing installation, operations and maintenance costs. With more than nine gigawatts (GWs) worth of its products installed on five continents, in 1991 Fremont, California-based NEXTracker published a groundbreaking white paper describing a new algorithm that improved solar tracking and resulted in gains of around three percent in solar PV facility production. While that methodology continues to be applied in nearly all solar energy tracking systems today, NEXTracker is pushing the technological envelope out further. On July 11, the company introduced its latest innovation to the market, a "first-of-its-kind intelligent, self-adjusting tracker control system for solar power plants."