Deep learning models for defect detection in electroluminescence images of solar PV modules
Date
2024-05-29
Authors
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Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand
Abstract
This thesis introduces multi-class solar cell defect detection (SCDD) in electroluminescence (EL) images of PV modules using semantic segmentation. The research is based on experimental results from training and testing existing deep-learning models on a novel dataset developed specifically for this thesis. The dataset consists of EL images and corresponding segmentation masks for defect detection and quantification in EL images of solar PV cells from mono crystalline and multi crystalline silicon wafer-based modules. While many papers have already been published on defect detection and classification in EL images, semantic segmentation is new to this field. The prior art was largely focused on methods to improve EL image quality, classify cells into normal or defective categories, statistical methods and machine learning models for classification, object detection, and some binary segmentation of cracks specifically. This research shows that multi-class semantic segmentation models have the potential to provide accurate defect detection and quantification in both high-quality lab-based EL images and lower-quality field-based EL images of PV modules. While most EL images are collected in factory and lab settings, advancements in imaging technology will lead to an increasing number of EL images taken in the field. Thus, effective methods for SCDD must be robust to various images taken in the labs and the real world, in the same way that deep-learning models for autonomous vehicles that navigate the city streets in some parts of the world today must be robust to real-world environments. The semantic segmentation of EL images, as opposed to image classification, yields statistical data that can then be correlated to the power output for large batches of PV modules.
This research evaluates the effectiveness of semantic segmentation to provide a quantitative analysis of PV module quality based on qualitative EL images. The raw EL image is translated into tabular datasets for further downstream analysis. First, we developed a dataset that included 29 classes in the ground truth masks in which each pixel was coloured according to the class. The classes were grouped into intrinsic “features” of solar cells and extrinsic “defects.” Next, a fully-supervised U-Net trained on the small dataset showed that SCDD using semantic segmentation was a viable approach. Next, additional fully-supervised deep-learning models(U-Net, PSPNet, DeepLabV3, DeepLabV3+) were trained using equal, inverse, and custom class weights to identify the best model for SCDD. A benchmark dataset was published along with benchmark performance metrics. The model performance was measured using mean recall, mean precision, and the mean intersection over union (mIoU) for a subset of the most common defects (cracks, inactive areas, and gridline defects) and features (ribbon interconnects and cell spacing) in the dataset. This work focused on developing a deep-learning method for SCDD independent of the imaging equipment, PV module design, and image quality that would be broadly applicable to EL images from any source. The initial experiment showed that semantic segmentation was a viable method for SCDD. The U-Net trained on the initial dataset with 108 images in the training dataset produced good representations of the features common to most of the cells and good representations of the defects with a reasonable sample size. Other defects with only a few examples in the training dataset were not effectively detected in this model. The U-Net results also showed that themIoU measured higher for the features compared to the defects across all models, which correlated with the size of the large features compared to the small defects that each class occupies in the images.
The next set of experiments showed that the DeepLabv3+ trained with custom class weights scored the highest in terms of mIoU for the selected defects and features when compared to the alternative fully-supervised models. While the mIoU for cracks was still low (25%), the recall was high (86%). While increasing the recall substantially, the many long, narrow defects (e.g. cracks and gridlines) and features (e.g. ribbon interconnects and spacing) in the dataset were challenging to segment, especially at the borders. The custom class weights also tended to dilate the long, narrow features, which led to low precision. However, the resulting representations reliably located these defects in the complex images with both large and small objects, and the dilation proved effective at visually highlighting the long-narrow defects when the cell-level images were combined into module-level images. Therefore, the model prove useful in the context of detecting critical defects and quantifying the relative size of the defects in EL images of PV cells and modules despite the relatively low mIoU. The dataset was also published along with this paper. The final set of experiments focused on semi-supervised and self-supervised models. The results suggested that supervised training on a large out of-domain (OOD) dataset (COCO), self supervised pretraining on a large OOD dataset (ImageNet), and semi-supervised pretraining (CCT) were statistically equivalent as measured by the mIoU on a subset of critical defects and features. A new state-of-the-art (SOTA) for SCDD was achieved, exceeding the mIoU from the DeeplabV3+ with custom weights. The experiments also demonstrated that certain pretraining schemes resulted in the ability to detect and quantify underrepresented classes, such as the round ring defect. The unique contributions from this work include two benchmark datasets for multi-class semantic segmentation in EL images of solar PV cells. The smaller dataset consists of 765 images with corresponding ground truth masks. The larger dataset consists of more than 20,000 unlabelled EL images. The thesis also documents the performance metrics from various deep learning models based on fully-supervised, semi-supervised, and self-supervised architectures
Description
A research report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024
Keywords
deep-learning, semantic segmentation, defect detection, electroluminescent imaging, UCTD
Citation
Pratt, Lawrence. (2024). Deep Learning Models for Defect Detection in Electroluminescence Images of Solar PV Modules [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WireDSpace.https://hdl.handle.net/10539/42163