Reliability oriented design tool for the new generation of grid connected PV-inverters

This paper introduces a reliability-oriented design tool for a new generation of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) inverters. The proposed design tool consists of a real field mission profile (RFMP) model (for two operating regions: USA and Denmark), a PV panel model, a grid-connected PV inverter model, an electrothermal model, and the lifetime model of the power semiconductor devices. An accurate long-term simulation model able to consider the one-year RFMP (solar irradiance and ambient temperature) is developed. Thus, the one-year estimation of the converter device thermal loading distribution is achieved and is further used as an input to the lifetime model. The proposed reliability-oriented design tool is used to study the impact of mission profile (MP) variation 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 (up to 70%) on the converter lifetime expectation, and it should be considered in the design stage to better optimize the converter design margin. In order to have correct lifetime estimation, it is crucial to consider also the device degradation feedback (in the simulation model), which has an impact of 20-30% on the precision of the lifetime estimation for the studied case.