TY - JOUR
T1 - Accelerated testing of module-level power electronics for long-term reliability
AU - Flicker, Jack
AU - Tamizhmani, Govindasamy
AU - Moorthy, Mathan Kumar
AU - Thiagarajan, Ramanathan
AU - Ayyanar, Raja
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Award DE-FC36-07GO17034. This work was also supported by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. DOEs National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2011-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2017/1
Y1 - 2017/1
N2 - This work has applied a suite of long-term-reliability accelerated tests to a variety of module-level power electronics (MLPE) devices (such as microinverters and optimizers) from five different manufacturers. This dataset is one of the first (only the paper by Parker et al. entitled 'Dominant factors affecting reliability of alternating current photovoltaic modules,' in Proc. 42nd IEEE Photovoltaic Spec. Conf. , 2015, is reported for reliability testing in the literature), as well as the largest, experimental sets in public literature, both in the sample size (five manufacturers including both dc/dc and dc/ac units and 20 units for each test) and the number of experiments (six different experimental test conditions) for MLPE devices. The accelerated stress tests (thermal cycling test per IEC 61215 profile, damp heat test per IEC 61215 profile, and static temperature tests at 100 and 125 °C) were performed under powered and unpowered conditions. The first independent long-term experimental data regarding damp heat and grid transient testing, as well as the longest term (>9 month) testing of MLPE units reported in the literature for thermal cycling and high-temperature operating life, are included in these experiments. Additionally, this work is the first to show in situ power measurements, as well as periodic efficiency measurements over a series of experimental tests, demonstrating whether certain tests result in long-term degradation or immediate catastrophic failures. The result of this testing highlights the performance of MLPE units under the application of several accelerated environmental stressors.
AB - This work has applied a suite of long-term-reliability accelerated tests to a variety of module-level power electronics (MLPE) devices (such as microinverters and optimizers) from five different manufacturers. This dataset is one of the first (only the paper by Parker et al. entitled 'Dominant factors affecting reliability of alternating current photovoltaic modules,' in Proc. 42nd IEEE Photovoltaic Spec. Conf. , 2015, is reported for reliability testing in the literature), as well as the largest, experimental sets in public literature, both in the sample size (five manufacturers including both dc/dc and dc/ac units and 20 units for each test) and the number of experiments (six different experimental test conditions) for MLPE devices. The accelerated stress tests (thermal cycling test per IEC 61215 profile, damp heat test per IEC 61215 profile, and static temperature tests at 100 and 125 °C) were performed under powered and unpowered conditions. The first independent long-term experimental data regarding damp heat and grid transient testing, as well as the longest term (>9 month) testing of MLPE units reported in the literature for thermal cycling and high-temperature operating life, are included in these experiments. Additionally, this work is the first to show in situ power measurements, as well as periodic efficiency measurements over a series of experimental tests, demonstrating whether certain tests result in long-term degradation or immediate catastrophic failures. The result of this testing highlights the performance of MLPE units under the application of several accelerated environmental stressors.
KW - Accelerated life test
KW - microinverter (MI)
KW - module-level power electronics (MLPE)
KW - optimizer
KW - photovoltaics (PV)
KW - reliability
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U2 - 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2016.2621339
DO - 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2016.2621339
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84995555439
SN - 2156-3381
VL - 7
SP - 259
EP - 267
JO - IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics
JF - IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics
IS - 1
M1 - 7740890
ER -