Thermal Management of IGBT Module in the Wind Power Converter Based on the ROI

Abstract

Insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) module is one of the most prone-to-fail components in the wind power converter (WPC). The reduction of the junction temperature swing by thermal management can improve the reliability of a WPC. Due to the lack of an applicable selection criterion, not many studies on the control target of junction temperature swing were reported. This article proposes a thermal management strategy to find the control target of junction temperature swing. The proposed strategy considers the return on investment (ROI) of thermal management as a quantitative indicator to guide the control target selection. The selected control target enables optimal benefit of the thermal management. Results show that a 1% increase in the total harmonic distortion would extend the lifetime of IGBT module by 0.144 years. Success of the proposed scheme lies in the efficient regulation of the junction temperature swing. Case studies with different mission profiles and experimental tests on a three-phase two-level inverter are presented to validate the proposed method.