The invention discloses a method and a system for online detection of photovoltaic modules. An intelligent control circuit is separately connected with a short-circuiting device, a voltage detection circuit, a current detection circuit, a power supply circuit, a lightning protection module, a manual control circuit, a sound-light alarm circuit and a data transmission and communication circuit connected in parallel to the photovoltaic module; and the data transmission and communication circuit is also connected with a terminal management system. The method and the system for online detection of photovoltaic modules have the advantages that photovoltaic modules can be directly monitored by adopting the system or a header box, so that the fault positioning is more accurate, photovoltaic modules with abnormal parameters can be picked out without faults, the overall power generation capability is improved, and the comprehensive operation and maintenance cost of a photovoltaic power station is reduced; the system is low in cost and convenient to install, the cost is further lower than that of a system with an independent module monitoring module, and the reliability is greatly enhanced; and the productized system can be popularized and applied in all scenes adopting photovoltaic modules for power generation, and thus has great popularization value.