Thermal analysis of critical components in photovoltaic inverter

The renewable energy based on photovoltaic (PV) has been growing remarkably in the last years with many investments in new and bigger plants worldwide. A PV plant is a complex system composed by several devices. Among these, a fundamental equipment is represented by the inverter, the fault or failure of which can lead to looses in the electricity production of the plant. For this reason an important task to take into account in the design of PV plant is the performance optimization of this equipment in order to guarantee a high efficiency level of the whole plant. In this paper a study of the critical components from the thermal point of view of a PV inverter is proposed. The final aim is a proposal of a reliable design solution considering the real condition of use for the plant and, consequently, an improvement of the PV inverter yield. At the same time, the study allows to optimize both the availability and the maintainability of the inverter hence of the whole PV plant.