A Perspective on Power Converters Design: Stability and Reliability Aspects

Abstract

This paper proposes a new approach for design of power electronics converters considering reliability and stability issues from a system level perspective. Conventional design approaches rely only the reliability of the overall system. However, a converter failure can also introduce stability issues, which in turn increase the risk of loss of load in power electronics-based power systems. This may be severe considering increasing failure rate due to aging of converters. In this paper, a modeling approach is proposed to link the reliability of the converter, stability, and risk of the system in order to design a converter to guarantee acceptable performance of the overall system. Simulations on a hybrid micro grid (HMG) illustrate that even though the stability issues increase the total risk of the system, optimal oversizing and redesigning of the critical components can reduce the risk of system and minimize the adverse impacts of the system stability.