Condition monitoring of power electronic converters in power plants — A review

Abstract

In terms of power supplies and power conversion, power electronics based converters have their own advantages. Proper condition monitoring for power electronic converter has become necessary which is now in incipient stage. This paper includes different kinds of failure modes associated with power electronics at the converter as well as device level and recent Condition Monitoring (CM) techniques to detect those faults at the earliest stage. Proper reliability improvement has to be performed on power electronic systems so that they could be more resistive to different aspects such as safety, cost and availability. Power semiconducting devices are considered to be the most sensitive part of the power electronic systems and the main causes of stresses on these devices could be initiated due to the atmospheric conditions as well as short duration heavy loads, which should be considered during power electronic system design and normal operation as the consequences of these can't be felt at the initial stage which demands conservative converter design.