Bahir Dar Institute of Technology (BiT)

Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Post Graduate Program in Power System Engineering

“Advanced Power Electronics for Utility Application (EEng-6024)”

Paper Review on Impact of distributed power electronics on the lifetime and

reliability of PV systems

Prepared by:

Name ID Number Email

Yaschalew Ayele BDU1401894 yaschayele@gmail.com

Seraw Gedamu BDU1401878 sirgwh@gmail.com

Submitted to: Dr.Teketay M.

Date: Jan 3, 2023 G.C

 Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. ii

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 distributed power electronics in photovoltaic systems ................................................................ 1

2. Simulation result and analysis of using distributed power electronics on end of life performance of
PV system ....................................................................................................................................... 2

2.1 Scenario I simulation result Analysis .......................................................................................... 2

2.2 Scenario II simulation result Analysis ........................................................................................ 4

3. Reliability of photovoltaic systems with distributed power electronics ........................................... 4

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Reference .............................................................................................................................................. 6

Paper Review on Impact of distributed power electronics on the life time and Reliability of PV
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Abstract
The paper tries to show impact of using distributed power electronics in photovoltaic (PV)
systems in terms of end-of-life energy-capture performance and reliability as compared to
the conventional pv system by doing simulation of PV installations over system lifetime at
various degradation rates and various coefficient of variation (CV).The result [2] shows that
module-level or submodule-level power converters can decrease variations in cell
degradation over time and hence effectively increasing the system lifespan by 5–10years as
compared to the conventional PV system and even in the case of unrecoverable failures of
the power electronics converters, DPP PV-to-bus subMICs consistently improve the energy
yield and notably extend the end-of-life performance of PV systems by more than 5years.

KEYWORS: subMICs, Sub module integrated converter; micro inverters; lifetime; reliability

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1. Introduction
Even though many researchers shown that the use of solar energy is growing exponentially over
the last 20 years its price per watt is still the main issue. It is highly depends on installation cost
and efficiency of the whole PV system over its operational periods. During installation of pv
system Modules are connected in series to form a string and series connected modules are highly
vulnerable to cell mismatch and this may be due to manufacturing tolerances, partial shading,
dirt, thermal gradients, or aging. Hence cell mismatches have negative effects on the energy
output of conventional PV systems and it may hide maximum power point tracking operation.
Mismatched cells may become reverse biased and dissipate power when we use bypass diodes
instead and it may producing an undesired temperature increase of the cell or a hot spot. Hence
undesired temperature increase of the cell may accelerate the end of life of PV system and finally
the reduction of reliability of the PV system and this was the statement of problem of this
research article. To solve mismatch effects and enhance the end of life of PV system many PV
architectures based on module-distributed or sub module distributed power electronics have been
proposed and simulation has been done to show how module-distributed or sub module
distributed power electronics enhance the end of life of PV system as compared to conventional
PV system. Similarly the paper tries to show the impact of distributed power electronics on the
reliability of PV system by considering converter failure model.

1.1 distributed power electronics in photovoltaic systems

There are different types of distributions of power electronics architectures in PV systems
installation. System-level inverter or sometimes called conventional approach, FPP DC
optimizers or micro inverters, Differential power processing (DPP) distributed converters (PV-to
bus and PV-to-PV architectures), the most recent approaches mainly contains micro converter at
sub module levels and Combination of DPP and FPP converters or named as sub MIC-
enhanced micro inverters architectures are used in this paper to study their impacts on end of
life and reliability of PV system.

Just like other material crystalline silicon cells of PV system degraded linearly from time to time
and degradation rates of the nominal power are within 0.5% – 0.8%/year mostly reported number
being 0.6%/year. Due to that PV system have end of life in energy capturing performance and
Paper Review on Impact of distributed power electronics on the life time and Reliability of PV
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mostly it should give 80% of the initial energy output at the end of 25 years and this value is
taken as the end of life of energy capturing performance criteria. Similarly As the time goes or
aging of the pv system leads increasing the coefficient of variation (CV) of the short-circuit
current and it is about 1% when the module is new, and it increases from 0.36%/year, up to 10%
in year 25 [3].When we come to the point the paper is try to show the impact of using distributed
power electronics in the end of life and reliability of the pv system based on various degradation
rates and coefficients of variation.

2. Simulation result and analysis of using distributed power electronics on

end of life performance of PV system
Basically two Scenarios were taken to show the impact of distributed power electronics on
End of life performance and reliability PV system. The first Scenario is for a commercial
utility-scale system composed of mono crystalline PV modules which contains 8 strings and
each string contains 16 modules whereas the second scenario is for a residential system using
polycrystalline PV modules and it contains two strings and each string holds 7 modules.

2.1 Scenario I simulation result Analysis

Figure 1 a. Scenario 1 with full set of eight strings [2] Figure 1 b. Scenario 1 with one string only [2].

Paper Review on Impact of distributed power electronics on the life time and Reliability of PV
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The above figure shows Level curves for 80% of the nominal power in the utility scale
photovoltaic (PV) system of scenario I, with different degradation rates and coefficients of
variation (CVs). Solid line represents conventional central inverter whereas dashed line points
PV-to-bus sub MICs and dash-dotted line represents PV-to-PV sub MICs. The circle shows
the point for a degradation rate of –0.6%/year and a CV of 0.36%/year, which approximately
matches the energy yield of a conventional PV system after 25years. The square marks point
out that, in a conventional system, the 80% output power at year 30 can only be achieved if
either the CV and/or the degradation rates are smaller. The triangle mark illustrates that the
PV-to-bus architecture yields approximately the same performance of the conventional
approach after 35years that is, increasing the lifespan of the system by 10years.Figure 1b
shows nearly the same results with only one string as compared to eight strings case. This
result shows that string-level inverters do not provide important lifetime energy yield
improvements with current PV technologies.

Figure 2.Level curves for 80% of the nominal power in the utility-scale photovoltaic (PV)
system of scenario I [2].

Here from the above figure 2 Solid lines shows full power processing (FPP) MICs and dash

Paper Review on Impact of distributed power electronics on the life time and Reliability of PV
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Dotted line shows FPP sub MICs similarly dashed line is for differential power processing
(DPP) PV-to-bus sub MICs and also Dotted line is for sub MIC-enhanced micro inverters.
The diamond mark suggests that FPP MICs yield an 80% power output after 30years,
whereas FPP sub MICs meet this requirement after 35years (star mark)[2]. Hence the end of
life of conventional PV system increased by 5 – 10 years due to the use of distributed power
electronics.

2.2 Scenario II simulation result Analysis

According the simulation results of the paper [2] PV-to-bus architecture can increase the
lifespan of the PV system by 10years, almost meeting the requirement after 35 years of
residential polycrystalline PV modules with two strings. Similarly as in scenario I, FPP MICs
barely yield an 80% power output after 30 years, whereas FPP sub MICs almost meet this
requirement after 35years for residential polycrystalline PV system.

Finally as we have seen from the simulation results with the two scenarios the lifespan of PV
systems can be considerably extended due to the use of distributed power electronics. In both
cases we have seen that 80% of the nominal power can be able to capture by PV system after
30 and 35 years of use and it can be able to extend the end of life of PV system by 5-10 years
due to the use of distributed power electronics. Specifically as we have seen from the
simulation result the architectures with sub module-level power electronics present
significant advantages over module-level approaches. The PV-to-bus sub MICs and the sub
MIC-enhanced micro inverters provide equal or better performance than the FPP sub MICs
for CV rates below the typical 0.4%/year, with smaller and less expensive sub MICs.

3. Reliability of photovoltaic systems with distributed power electronics

In the previous section we have seen that there is a positive impact of using distributed power
electronics in extending the end of life time of PV system and we haven.t yet consider any
converter failure under simulation analysis. But here the article tries to see that what will
happen if any converter or distributed power electronics fails. Does the PV system still
continue functioning energy capturing performance as we have seen previously or decrease
the energy yield of the PV system or it stops? That is what we call it the impact of using

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distributed power electronics on the reliability of the whole PV system and to show that the
same simulations have been performed with including random power converter faults for
different power electronics configurations. The failure model is based on a Weibull
probability density function accounting for 5 % failure rate of the converters after 25years
and 20 % after 50years.

The results [2] show that FPP solutions exhibit a high susceptibility to converter failure and
that they can even decrease the energy yield of the PV system in case of a fault. Only the sub
MIC-enhanced micro inverters could provide some advantage over the conventional system
if the failure rates and cost of a central inverter are large enough to outweigh the negative
effects of sub MIC and micro inverter faults. In contrast, DPP approaches provide consistent
improvements with respect to the conventional approach, and they show the lowest
dependence on converter failures and PV mismatch of all the distributed power electronics
architectures analyzed in the paper. Even in the case of unrecoverable failures of the power
electronics converters, DPP PV-to-bus sub MICs consistently improve the energy yield and
notably extend the end-of-life performance of PV systems by more than 5 years.

Conclusion
In the first set of simulations result, it has been conclude that power electronics can prolong
the lifetime of PV systems or, equivalently, improve their performance at 25year end-of-life.
Specifically FPP module-level approaches, such as DC optimizers, improve the lifetime of
PV systems by roughly 5years, whereas FPP and DPP approaches at the sub module level
can extend the system life time to 35years.

In the second set of simulations result with considering power converter failures we can
conclude that failures of the power electronics converters in DPP PV-to-bus subMICs
consistently improve the energy yield and notably extend the end-of-life performance of PV
systems by more than 5years.This proves that the reliability of pv system is not affected by
distributed power converter failure specifically in this type of arectectures and hence
distributed power electronics have a potential for reducing the levelized cost of energy of PV
systems.

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Reference
1. Progress in photovoltaics: research and applications prog. Photovolt: res. appl. 2017;
25:821–835.
2. Published online 26 April 2017 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI:
10.1002/pip.2893.
3. Jordan D, Wohlgemuth J, Kurtz S. Technology and climate trends in PV module
degradation, In 27 the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition,
PVSEC, Frankfurt, Germany, 2012; 3118–3124.

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