Automating Component-Level Stress Measurements for Inverter Reliability Estimation

Jack Flicker, Jay Johnson, Peter Hacke and Ramanathan Thiagarajan
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Jack Flicker: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA
Jay Johnson: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA
Peter Hacke: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lakewood, CO 80401, USA
Ramanathan Thiagarajan: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lakewood, CO 80401, USA

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 13, 1-15

Abstract: In the near future, grid operators are expected to regularly use advanced distributed energy resource (DER) functions, defined in IEEE 1547-2018, to perform a range of grid-support operations. Many of these functions adjust the active and reactive power of the device through commanded or autonomous operating modes which induce new stresses on the power electronics components. In this work, an experimental and theoretical framework is introduced which couples laboratory-measured component stress with advanced inverter functionality and derives a reduction in useful lifetime based on an applicable reliability model. Multiple DER devices were instrumented to calculate the additional component stress under multiple reactive power setpoints to estimate associated DER lifetime reductions. A clear increase in switch loss was demonstrated as a function of irradiance level and power factor. This is replicated in the system-level efficiency measurements, although magnitudes were different—suggesting other loss mechanisms exist. Using an approximate Arrhenius thermal model for the switches, the experimental data indicate a lifetime reduction of 1.5% when operating the inverter at 0.85 PF—compared to unity PF—assuming the DER failure mechanism thermally driven within the H-bridge. If other failure mechanisms are discovered for a set of power electronics devices, this testing and calculation framework can easily be tailored to those failure mechanisms.

Keywords: inverter reliability; grid-support functions; stress; lifetime; component degradation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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