V-I Curve Based Condition Monitoring System for Power Devices

According to gaining importance of power electronics systems in the society, reliability issues of power semiconductor devices are the constrains on availability of the system operations. Regular interval based maintenance for higher availability, on the other hand, increases operation cost since the lifetime of power devices have a large deviation with production lots or conditions which they are used. Condition based maintenance (CBM) of power semiconductor devices will be a promising solution for both the availability and cost of power electronics system maintenance. In this study, a high signal resolution condition monitoring system board has been demonstrated. The system monitors real time V-I curve for both switching device and diode with case temperature and the data is stored on board memory and can be monitored on-line. The board was mounted on the gate driver board being supplied power from the gate driver board and demonstrated on a commercial 60kVA inverter.