A photovoltaic (PV) generator is significantly regarded as one important alternative of renewable energy systems recently. Fault detection and diagnosis of engineering dynamic systems is a fundamental issue to timely prevent unexpected damages in industry fields. This paper presents an intelligent monitoring approach and fault detection technique for PV generator systems by means of artificial neural network and statistical signal detection theory. We devise a multi-Fourier neural network model for representing dynamics of PV systems and apply a general likelihood ratio test (GLRT) approach for investigating our decision making algorithm in fault detection and diagnosis. We make use of a test-bed of ubiquitous sensor network (USN) based PV monitoring systems for testing our proposed fault detection methodology. Lastly, a real-time experiment is accomplished for demonstrating its reliability and practicability.