Reliability Improvement of Grid Connected PV Inverter Considering Monofacial and Bifacial Panels Using Hybrid IGBT

Abstract

The development of bifacial photovoltaics has led to significant advancements in solar energy. Unlike traditional solar panels, which only generate electricity from the front side, these panels capture the energy from the rear and front surfaces. Bifacial photovoltaics utilize a dual-sided absorption to capture the sunlight that falls on nearby structures and the ground. This technology helps boost their efficiency and makes them an economical and sustainable choice. Furthermore, the increased energy production from the rear side of bifacial panels may lead to higher voltage fluctuations, which affects the thermal stability of PV inverter. Nevertheless, PV inverter is regarded as critical component which affects the reliability performance. Hence in this paper reliability improvement methodology with hybrid IGBT is proposed for the PV inverter. The hybrid IGBT consists of Silicon (Si) IGBT and Silicon Carbide (SiC) Schottky diode. A test case of 3-kW Monofacial and Bifacial grid connected PV inverter system with various albedos is considered. Mission profile for one year at Hyderabad, India location is logged for the assessment. B10 lifetime is calculated for the proposed hybrid IGBT. The effectiveness of the proposed hybrid IGBT is evaluated in comparison with conventional IGBT. The proposed hybrid IGBT significantly improves the reliability performance of the PV inverter.