TY - JOUR
T1 - Dissipation Factor as a Degradation Indicator for Electrolytic Capacitors
AU - Ghadrdan, Moein
AU - Peyghami, Saeed
AU - Mokhtari, Hossein
AU - Wang, Huai
AU - Blaabjerg, Frede
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Reliable Power Electronic- Based Power Systems (REPEPS) Project at the AAU Energy Department, Aalborg University, as a part of the Villum Investigator Program funded by the Villum Foundation. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor Mario Pacas.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2023/2/1
Y1 - 2023/2/1
N2 - Capacitors are one of the most critical components in power electronic converters, yet they are notoriously susceptible to failure. Avoiding unforeseen outages caused by capacitor failures is one of the most effective approaches to increase system availability. Therefore, a variety of methods have been proposed to monitor a capacitor health condition based on different degradation indicators. This article proposes a new approach based on the accurate measurement of an electrolytic capacitor dissipation factor (DF) to detect its end-of-life. Since the DF is affected by both the capacitor resistance and capacitance simultaneously, it can provide more information about the health condition of the capacitor. To employ the DF as an aging indicator, beyond its accurate measurement, it must be possible to establish an end-of-life criterion and investigate the effect of other environmental factors. Therefore, increasing the frequency of the DF measurement has been suggested as a solution to minimize the effect of the angle measurement error, for which an optimal frequency range has been calculated. In the following, several electrolytic capacitors are subjected to a laboratory study to investigate the effects of capacitor aging, temperature, and measurement frequency on the DF. According to the obtained results, changes in the capacitor resistance dominate the DF, thereby enabling the same end-of-life criterion to be applied for monitoring a capacitor condition.
AB - Capacitors are one of the most critical components in power electronic converters, yet they are notoriously susceptible to failure. Avoiding unforeseen outages caused by capacitor failures is one of the most effective approaches to increase system availability. Therefore, a variety of methods have been proposed to monitor a capacitor health condition based on different degradation indicators. This article proposes a new approach based on the accurate measurement of an electrolytic capacitor dissipation factor (DF) to detect its end-of-life. Since the DF is affected by both the capacitor resistance and capacitance simultaneously, it can provide more information about the health condition of the capacitor. To employ the DF as an aging indicator, beyond its accurate measurement, it must be possible to establish an end-of-life criterion and investigate the effect of other environmental factors. Therefore, increasing the frequency of the DF measurement has been suggested as a solution to minimize the effect of the angle measurement error, for which an optimal frequency range has been calculated. In the following, several electrolytic capacitors are subjected to a laboratory study to investigate the effects of capacitor aging, temperature, and measurement frequency on the DF. According to the obtained results, changes in the capacitor resistance dominate the DF, thereby enabling the same end-of-life criterion to be applied for monitoring a capacitor condition.
KW - Condition monitoring
KW - dissipation factor (DF)
KW - electrolytic capacitor
KW - end-of-life criteria
KW - loss angle
KW - predictive maintenance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132611850&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/JESTPE.2022.3183837
DO - 10.1109/JESTPE.2022.3183837
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132611850
SN - 2168-6777
VL - 11
SP - 1035
EP - 1044
JO - IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics
JF - IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics
IS - 1
ER -