Thermographic Analysis for Failure Time Estimation of PV-qZMLI

A very commendable progress has been observed in the grid-connected photovoltaic quasi-Z-Source multilevel inverters (PV-qZMLI) in recent years. The advantages offered by the topology and the ever-increasing importance of its implementation in PV applications, electric vehicles, automobiles, spacecrafts, military, and other critical applications have led to testing the veracity of its lifetime and reliable operation. To assess the reliability, estimation of failure rates is of paramount importance. The temperature factor is essential to estimate the failure rate of the component. Since 53% of total failures in the inverters are reported to occur due to overheating, thermal management is pivotal. Therefore, this chapter contributes to the thermographic analysis of PV-qZMLI. The data is collected by introducing variations in input voltage, operating time, and operating states to track the thermal profile of each component in the proposed topology. The thermographs taken using a FLIR thermal imaging camera are presented, and the case studies are discussed for each operating condition. Also, the failure rates are calculated for varying operating conditions, and the results are elucidated.