The Reliability of IGBTs Used in the Converter of Wind Power

Operation conditions of the converter used in the wind turbine is special because the converter's power,fre-quency,current,voltage and other parameters are changing with the wind.The damage to the power devices caused by the power cycle and the thermal cycle will increase because the converter's operating conditions changes frequently and which causes the junction temperature and the base-plate temperature hardly changes.On the other hand,high-alti-tude region's rich wind resource provides a broad space for the application of the wind turbine's converter in high-al-titude region.The damage to power devices causes by the cosmic ray can not be ignored when the converter operated at about 4 km altitude.The high-powered wind turbines are usually required over 20 years running life,so the reliabili-ty of the IGBTs is highly concerned as the IGBTs are the bases of the wind turbine's converter which is one of the core of the wind turbine.It is summarized the normally operating characteristic of wind power converter.Detailed intro-duction is given about the analytical method of the reliability of IGBTs used in the wind power converter.