A design tool to study the impact of mission-profile on the reliability of SiC-based PV-inverter devices

This paper introduces a reliability-oriented design tool for a new generation of grid connected PV-inverters. The proposed design tool consists of a real field mission profile model (for one year operation in USA-Arizona), a PV-panel model, a grid connected PV-inverter model, an electro-thermal model and the lifetime model of the power semiconductor devices. A simulation model able to consider one year real field operation conditions (solar irradiance and ambient temperature) is developed. Thus, one year estimation of the converter devices thermal loading distribution is achieved and is further used as an input to a lifetime model. The proposed reliability oriented design tool is used to study the impact of MP and device degradation (aging) in the PV-inverter lifetime. The obtained results indicate that the MP of the field where the PV-inverter is operating has an important impact in the converter lifetime expectation, and it should be considered in the design stage to better optimize the converter design margin. In order to improve the accuracy of the lifetime estimation it is crucial to consider also the device degradation feedback (in the simulation model) which has an impact of 30% in the precision of the lifetime estimation in the studied case. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.