Reliability assessment of power conditioner considering maintenance in a PEM fuel cell system

Abstract Proton exchange membrane fuel cell recently emerges in the telecom backup power, where its reliability and availability issues are with high priority. In this paper, as one of the fragile sub-systems, the reliable performance of the power conditioner, including the power stage, the controller, the gate driver, the auxiliary the power supply and the printed circuit board, is the key focus. According to the configuration and main functions of the aforementioned key components, the fault tree structure of power conditioner can be established. With the help of the Weibull distribution, the random failure mode and wear-out failure mode impacts on the reliability can be estimated. Moreover, the reliability and availability curves can be studied by considering the maintenance scheme. In this case study, it can be seen that the wear-out issue is more worthy to be taken care compared to the random failure. Moreover, the regular maintenance with the key components significantly increases the reliability and availability performance of the power conditioner.