ESR and capacitance monitoring of a dc-link capacitor used in a three-phase PWM inverter with a front-end diode rectifier

Condition monitoring plays an important role in estimating health condition of capacitors because the ageing of the capacitors is usually accompanied by an increase in equivalent series resistance (ESR) and a decrease in capacitance. Either capacitance or ESR cannot be a unique indicator of the lifetime of capacitors in some cases. This paper presents a condition monitoring method of a dc-link capacitor used in a three-phase PWM inverter with a front-end diode rectifier intended for motor drives. The monitoring method extracts both the ESR and capacitance of a capacitor under test from the actual ripple current and voltage without disconnecting the capacitor nor injecting an additional current. The monitoring method, therefore, can be implemented online. Experimental results verify that the monitoring method independently obtains the ESR and capacitance changes of the capacitor under test. This contributes to accurate lifetime estimation of dc-link capacitors.