1. Introduction

The production of energy is an immense challenge for the coming years. Indeed, the energy requirements for industrialized societies are increasing [1]. Nowadays, 80.9% of world production of primary energy is supplied from fossil resources [2]. The scarcity of conventional energy and the environmental problems caused by its use have led to the usage of other renewable sources such as solar photovoltaic energy. It is stimulated first by the availability of solar resources in most part of the globe particularly in Africa where there is a strong solar resource and secondly by the decrease in the cost of photovoltaic equipment during the last decade [3], an average of 0.7 \$/kWh in 2016 and 0.5 \$/kWh in 2020. The production capacity of solar photovoltaic energy within the last three decades has witnessed a yearly increase of 44.2% between 1990 and 2010, to reach a production capacity of 99.2 GW in 2012 [4]. Global installed PV capacity at the end of 2016 was reported as 310 GWp [5]. The price of photovoltaic module dropped by 80% between 2009 and 2015 to reach the actual cost which is less than 1 USD/Wp [6]. PV is widely used in many applications nowadays [7].

The use of renewable energies has increased significantly in Cameroon these recent years since it is demonstrated that the access to modern forms of energy can contribute effectively to the revival of economy and reduction of poverty. In many countries around the world, the use of renewable energy contributes expanding employment opportunities which lead to promoting human development [8]. Recently Cameroon has embarked on the use of renewable energy, which has led to the creation of a directorate of renewable energy in the ministry of energy and water. Investments have been made in the public investment budget (PIB) for the installation of renewable energy systems particularly solar energy [1], for example, public lighting in cities and the countryside by using solar street lights, solar power plants for the villages' electricity supply, battery charging stations in villages, and solar power supplies for community centers. However, as they are installed in outdoor environment, continuous exposure to harsh environmental conditions (sun beam, rainfall, etc.) may reduce the optimal performance of the system. PV systems are difficult to implement because they encounter problems among which is the problem of servicing and maintenance. An effective operation and maintenance (O and M) program enables PV system production to reach its expected level of efficiency, which will consequently strengthen end users' confidence in such systems [9].

2. Maintenance strategies

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83730

the mean time until the next failure).

3. Maintenance technique management

Maintenance strategies are the "heart" of the maintenance planning process. They are responsible for defining the "maintenance actions" based on the information obtained from the system and preprocessed. Maintenance strategies are corrective, preventive, condition-based, opportunistic, focused-on-reliability, and production strategies [20]. The questions when, what, who, where, why, and how are the system interventions that should be executed or not, in order to keep the system functions alive [21]. One of the maintenance objectives is to reduce the failure occurrence, increase the availability, and extend the system life (or at least in

On-Field Operation and Maintenance of Photovoltaic Systems in Cameroon

A maintenance schedule, planning, and management are important for the evaluation of the health condition components and the incipient fault diagnosis. Different aspects of the operation and maintenance of renewable energy systems were proposed by [20, 22]. A generic structure of asset management which integrates business decisions to optimize investment decisions related to maintenance is presented by [23], and it consists of eight blocks of sequential management. In physical asset management, the maintenance optimization is a concern, because in general, the assets dete-

riorate as it is being raised and both the failure risk and cost increase [24]. Maintenance management model of assets is presented in Figure 1 below.

4. Operation and maintenance of the photovoltaic systems

Preventive maintenance consists of a regular observing passage and a frequent replacement of exhausted constituents of the system. Preventive maintenance can be systematic or conditional. Systematic preventive maintenance consists of changing worn out materials according to a preestablished schedule [26]. Preventive

4.1 Preventive maintenance

Maintenance management model [25].

Figure 1.

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The field performance of photovoltaic systems has been extensively studied for many applications especially in countries with strong database of solar resource [9]. However, these databases are used exclusively for assessing the electrical performance of the system [10]. To model the annual performance of photovoltaic modules, their performance characteristics are needed [11, 12]. The available information from manufacturers are typically limited to temperature coefficients, short circuit current Isc, open circuit voltage Voc, and maximum power Pmax, at rating conditions (G = 1000 W/m<sup>2</sup> , Tc = 25°C, AM = 1.5). The information is useful when one want to compare photovoltaic module performance at rating conditions but are inadequate to predict annual field performance under typical operating conditions [13]. It is demonstrated that there is difference between expected power production forecasts and field experience of photovoltaic arrays [14]. It has been shown that the relative performance ranking at rating conditions may not agree with the ranking based on monthly or annual performance. Faults in PVS may cause a huge amount of energy loss. A monitoring study was conducted on a test PV system by Firth et al. [15], and it was reported that the annual power loss due to various faults is about 18.9%.

Failures that occur in the PV systems can cause system shutdown. The main components involved are PV modules, cabling, protections, converters, and inverters. Failures are mainly caused by external operating conditions which are shading effects, module soiling, inverter failure, and aging of PV modules [16]. The line-to-line fault (LLF), ground fault (GF), and arc fault (AF) are tree catastrophic failures encountered in PV arrays [17]. PV system maintenance and performance are related to good inspection and monitoring. These are important in determining life-cycle costs and servicing requirements. Photovoltaic energy is seen as a viable option for decentralized energy production; the sustainability of these systems does not only depend on the initial system cost but also on the cost of maintenance and the lifetime related to the maintenance operations used [18, 19]. This chapter presents an overall of existing faults encountered in both DC and AC sides over a period of 9 years in more than 20 PV systems in Cameroon; this chapter also proposes detection techniques with a fault detection procedure (the breakdown tree diagram) that is intended to facilitate interventions on all components of PV systems.

On-Field Operation and Maintenance of Photovoltaic Systems in Cameroon DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83730
