Improved Reliability of Single-Phase PV Inverters by Limiting the Maximum Feed-in Power

Grid operation experiences have revealed the necessity to limit the maximum feed-in power from PV inverter systems under a high penetration scenario in order to avoid voltage and frequency instability issues. A Constant Power Generation (CPG) control method has been proposed at the inverter level. The CPG control strategy is activated only when the DC input power from PV panels exceeds a specific power limit. It enables to limit the maximum feed-in power to the electric grids and also to improve the utilization of PV inverters. As a further study, this paper investigates the reliability performance of the power devices (e.g. IGBTs) used in PV inverters with the CPG control under different feed-in power limits. A long-term mission profile (i.e. solar irradiance and ambient temperature) based stress analysis approach is extended and applied to obtain the yearly electrical and thermal stresses of the power devices, allowing a quantitative prediction of the power device lifetime. A study case on a 3 kW single-phase PV inverter has demonstrated the advantages of the CPG control in terms of improved reliability.