Failure prediction of PV inverters under operational stresses

Abstract

Since Photovoltaic (PV) systems have been widely used in the generation networks, their troubleshooting and field issues started to have a significant impact on the finance and long term plans of power generation because of the high possibility of power loss. The main contributor behind the failures of PV systems is Photovoltaic Inverters (PVI). For this reason, the reliability of PVI raise concerns to decision makers in PV plants and also manufacturers during the early design phase. In this paper, Markov technique was chosen to determine the reliability of PVI using the recent failure data of Siemens norm SN-29500 handbook. Results were significantly difference when they were compared to MIL-HDBK-217F, that was last updated in 1995.