Long-Term Climate Impact on IGBT Lifetime

Considerable efforts have been made to estimate the lifetime of power devices, e.g., IGBTs, when they are subjected to a specific loading profile, which is affected by real field mission profiles. In those cases, a yearly mission profile, e.g., ambient temperatures, wind speeds and solar irradiance levels, is adopted. However, the prior art assumes that the same accumulated damage is caused in each year during the operation of the solutions. In practice the mission profile will vary, making the assumption invalid. This paper thus examines the assumption of equally distributed damage accumulation throughout the lifetime, by analyzing multiple years of mission profiles.