On-line Condition Monitoring and Maintenance of Power Electronic Converters

This paper presents on-line technique for condition based maintenance of power electronic converters. The wear-out condition for high failure rate components is obtained based on parametric degradation. As per MIL Handbook 217 F, electrolytic capacitors and switching transistors together constitutes more than 90 % failures of power electronic systems. An electronic control gear circuit for fluorescent lamp is designed for on-line condition monitoring of target aluminum electrolytic capacitors and MOSFET at an accelerated aging condition. A low cost microcontroller board is programmed for data acquisition and test circuit control. Data values are serially communicated to National Instruments LabVIEW software, installed on the host computer for algorithm implementation and condition based maintenance of circuit. Using web publishing tool, the control of running state front panel VI is continuously transferred from local host to the client as an HTML file that is accessed in standard web browsers. Operator can remotely monitor the health of life limiting devices and can perform condition based shut down of the circuit. Also parametric data values of target devices are stored on hard disk of host computer in MS Excel file.