Instantaneous thermal modeling of the DC-link capacitor in PhotoVoltaic systems

Capacitors have been witnessed as one of the weak points in grid-connected PhotoVoltaic (PV) applications, and thus efforts have been devoted to the design of reliable DC-link capacitors in PV applications. Since the hot-spot temperature of the capacitor is one of the failure inducers, instantaneous thermal modeling approaches considering mission profiles for the DC-link capacitor in single-phase PV systems are explored in this paper. These thermal modelling approaches are based on: a) fast Fourier transform, b) look-up tables, and c) ripple current reconstruction. Moreover, the thermal modelling approaches for the DC-link capacitors take into account the instantaneous thermal characteristics, which are more challenging to the capacitor reliability during operation. Such instantaneous thermal modeling approaches enable a translation of instantaneous capacitor power losses to capacitor thermal loading from the operating conditions. As a consequence, it offers new insights into the temperature monitoring and reliability-oriented design of the DC-link capacitors, and thus a more reliable operation of single-phase grid-connected PV systems can be enhanced. Study results on a 3-kW single-phase grid-connected PV system have been adopted to demonstrate a look-up table based modelling approach, where real-field daily ambient conditions are considered.