Technologies (Apr 2023)

Photovoltaic Inverter Reliability Study through SiC Switches Redundant Structures

  • Ignacio Villanueva,
  • Nimrod Vázquez,
  • Joaquín Vaquero,
  • Claudia Hernández,
  • Héctor López-Tapia,
  • Rene Osorio-Sánchez

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies11020059
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 2
p. 59

Abstract

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Reliability is a very important issue in power electronics; however, sometimes it is not considered, studied, or analyzed. At present, renewables have become more popular, and more complex setups are required to drive this type of system. In the specific case of inverters in photovoltaic systems, the user’s safety, quality, reliability, and the system’s useful life must be guaranteed. In this paper, the reliability of a full bridge inverter is predicted by calculating metrics such as failure rates and Mean Time Between Failures. Reliability is obtained using different types of structures for SiC MOSFETs: serial systems, active parallel redundant systems, and passive parallel redundant systems. Finally, the reliability study shows that a system with a passive parallel redundant structure is more reliable and has a higher useful life compared to the other structures.

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