Tech Briefs Magazine - November 2023 - 15

years8
to avoid potential outages, creating
more e-waste. On the other hand, in mission-critical
applications such as offshore/
downhole energy production (e.g., oil
and gas, geothermal, etc.) or extraterrestrial
power distribution systems (e.g.,
lunar surface power system planned by
NASA's Artemis program), the extreme
environments degrade the power hardware
much faster, leading to largely unpredictable
aging profiles.
The underlying problem with most
existing power conversion infrastructure
is that it is very difficult to assess its
health or adapt its performance in real-time
without disrupting the operation.
Hence, to achieve dynamic performance
enhancement and resiliency improvement,
there is a major push toward developing
mission profile-oriented design
methods that lead to the seamless integration
of data-driven approaches with
the power hardware onboard for system
monitoring, dynamic adaptation, and
prognostic health management (PHM),
which can be together referred to as
" Edge Intelligence. "
Such approaches will further enable
the identification of aged or failing hardware
in real time and avoid preemptive
decommissioning, thereby increasing
the operational life. It will enable the
system operators to
make decisions in
the field about
maintenance or repair, and the supply
chain team to better estimate the logistics
or manage the inventory. For example,
it is reported that the U.S. DoD spends
billions of dollars on the inventory9,10
spares, repair parts, electronics, etc.
Edge intelligence will potentially help
save hundreds of millions if not billions
of dollars by reducing costs with a smaller
inventory due to informed planning,
avoiding preemptive maintenance or
replacement, and minimizing costly
failures in the field. Furthermore, these
techniques can be extended to a wider
set of applications, not limited to power
converters or even electronics in general.
Considering the broad impact potential,
the U.S. National Science Foundation
(NSF) recently funded a project11
to advance
some of the relevant technologies
over the next five years.
Three Layers in Power Conversion
System Modeling
The design of power converters
for sustainable energy systems involves
engineering in three main
layers - (1) component
or sub-circuit, (2) converter
or module or
sub-system, and (3)
of
cyber-physical system (or CPS). Hence,
performance improvement and resiliency
enhancement need to be integrated within
all these layers. Figure 2 shows a 3-tier
diagram of a unified approach where data
or information from the first layer flow to
the second and from the second layer to
the third for realizing edge intelligence as
a whole.
Major reliability-related industry concerns
about modern power converters
arise due to the following: (a) the large
number of devices being used, (b) variations
in the expected lifetime caused
by the mission profile (including factors
such as temperature, voltage, current,
etc.), and (c) the relatively small quantity
of historical field data available for wide
bandgap (WBG) semiconductor devices.
To address these, numerous methods
have been developed for the performance
testing and reliability characterization of
critical components such as semiconductor
devices (silicon or Si, silicon carbide
or SiC, gallium nitride or GaN, etc.),
capacitors (electrolytic, film, ceramic,
etc.), printed circuit boards,
solder, etc.
Furthermore, several
recent studies have
proposed techniques
to estimate the remaining
useful
lifetime (RUL)
Tech Briefs, November 2023
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