Real-time Condition Monitoring of Power Modules in Grid-tied Power Converter

This paper proposes and demonstrates a real-time condition monitoring method using gate driver integrated sensing circuits and sensor fusion algorithms. Power device on-state voltage $(\mathbf{V}_{DSon})$ measurement and junction temperature $(\mathbf{T}_{j})$ sensing circuits with high noise immunity are built and integrated into an adaptive gate driver circuit for power modules. Considering the inherently noisy measurement environment of power converters, $\mathbf{V}_{DSon}$ together with several other measurements are fused together to provide accurate descriptions of the stress and degradation of each power device. Furthermore, the gate driver circuit can actively control the turn-on gate voltage $(\mathbf{V}_{GSon})$ for each device based on the stress and degradation state. The proposed sensing circuits and power device condition assessment algorithms are implemented in a 75 KVA grid-tied power converter. This paper focuses on the sensing circuits hardware designs and testing in grid-tied power converter prototype and device stress index generation. More comprehensive results on the device state of health index generation will be presented in future work.