Conventional fault detection methods in photovoltaic systems face limitations when dealing with emerging monitoring systems that produce vast amounts of high-dimensional data across various domains. Accordingly, great interest appears within the international scientific community for the application of artificial intelligence methods, which are seen as a highly promising solution for effectively managing large datasets for detecting faults. In this review, more than 620 papers published since 2010 on artificial intelligence methods for detecting faults in photovoltaic systems are analyzed. To extract major research trends, in particular to detect most promising algorithms and approaches overcoming excessive time calculations, a conventional bibliographic survey would have been extremely difficult to complete. That is why this study proposes to carry out a review with an innovative approach based on a statistical method named Bibliometric and a Expert qualitative content analysis. This methodology consists of three stages. First, a collection of data from databases is carried out with all precautions to achieve a large, robust, high-quality database. Second, multiple bibliometric indicators are chosen based on the objectives to be achieved and analyzed to assess their real impact, such as the quantity and nature of publications, collaborative connections among organizations, researchers, and countries or most cited articles. Finally, the Expert qualitative content analysis carried out by experts identifies the current and emerging research topics that have the greatest impact on fault detection in photovoltaic systems using artificial intelligence.
