Prof Dr. Dylan Dah Chuan Lu
Head Of Discipline, Electrical Power And Energy Systems
School of Electrical and Data Engineering,
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Title: Reliability Assessment and Improvement of Power Electronic Converters
Summary: Power electronic converters (PECs) have been the enabling technology to harness energy from nature, electrify our society and unlock the great potential for emerging applications such as wireless power transfer and microgrids. As the penetration of PECs increases, not only do the cost and performance become critical, but also the reliability of PECs because when they fail, the consequences such as blackouts and potential accidents can be economically and societally catastrophic. While rigorous testing such as accelerated tests is an important practice to study the ageing process of PECs, reliability standards are another tool to provide useful insights into the failure of devices and PECs from statistical and static viewpoints. Another tool is the physics of failure modelling which analyzes the ageing process of power devices dynamically. This talk will first explain the use of a reliability standard to assess two-port and three-port DC/DC converters. Based on reliability assessment, it will explain some ideas of generating more reliable PECs. Next, it will discuss the modelling of the ageing process of MOSFETs in the context of PECs. Nevertheless, the devices in the PECs will fail eventually. There must be some remedial actions should the applications be critical and require an uninterruptible power supply. It will then discuss ways in the PECs to detect and isolate faulty devices and reconfigure themselves to ensure supply availability is achieved.