Review of Health Prognostics and Condition Monitoring of Electronic Components

To meet the specifications of low cost, highly reliable electronic devices, fault diagnosis techniques play an essential role. It is vital to find flaws at an early stage in design, components, material, or manufacturing during the initial phase. This review paper attempts to summarize past development and recent advances in the areas about green manufacturing, maintenance, remaining useful life (RUL) prediction, and like. The current state of the art in reliability research for electronic components, mainly includes failure mechanisms, condition monitoring, and residual lifetime evaluation is explored. A critical analysis of reliability studies to identify their relative merits and usefulness of the outcome of these studies' vis-a-vis green manufacturing is presented. The wide array of statistical, empirical, and intelligent tools and techniques used in the literature are then identified and mapped. Finally, the findings are summarized, and the central research gap is highlighted

Doubly-fed induction generator used in wind energy

Wound-rotor induction generator has numerous advantages in wind power generation over other generators. One scheme for wound-rotor induction generator is realized when a converter cascade is used between the slip-ring terminals and the utility grid to control the rotor power. This configuration is called the doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG). In this work, a novel induction machine model is developed. This model includes the saturation in the main and leakage flux paths. It shows that the model which considers the saturation effects gives more realistic results. A new technique, which was developed for synchronous machines, was applied to experimentally measure the stator and rotor leakage inductance saturation characteristics on the induction machine. A vector control scheme is developed to control the rotor side voltage-source converter. Vector control allows decoupled or independent control of both active and reactive power of DFIG. These techniques are based on the theory of controlling the B- and q- axes components of voltage or current in different reference frames. In this work, the stator flux oriented rotor current control, with decoupled control of active and reactive power, is adopted. This scheme allows the independent control of the generated active and reactive power as well as the rotor speed to track the maximum wind power point. Conventionally, the controller type used in vector controllers is of the PI type with a fixed proportional and integral gain. In this work, different intelligent schemes by which the controller can change its behavior are proposed. The first scheme is an adaptive gain scheduler which utilizes different characteristics to generate the variation in the proportional and the integral gains. The second scheme is a fuzzy logic gain scheduler and the third is a neuro-fuzzy controller. The transient responses using the above mentioned schemes are compared analytically and experimentally. It has been found that although the fuzzy logic and neuro-fuzzy schemes are more complicated and have many parameters; this complication provides a higher degree of freedom in tuning the controller which is evident in giving much better system performance. Finally, the simulation results were experimentally verified by building the experimental setup and implementing the developed control schemes

Performance Analysis Of Hybrid Ai-Based Technique For Maximum Power Point Tracking In Solar Energy System Applications

Demand is increasing for a system based on renewable energy sources that can be employed to both fulfill rising electricity needs and mitigate climate change. Solar energy is the most prominent renewable energy option. However, only 30%-40% of the solar irradiance or sunlight intensity is converted into electrical energy by the solar panel system, which is low compared to other sources. This is because the solar power system\u27s output curve for power versus voltage has just one Global Maximum Power Point (GMPP) and several local Maximum Power Points (MPPs). For a long time, substantial research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been undertaken to build algorithms that can track the MPP more efficiently to acquire the most output from a Photovoltaic (PV) panel system because traditional Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) techniques such as Incremental Conductance (INC) and Perturb and Observe (P&Q) are unable to track the GMPP under varying weather conditions. Literature (K. Y. Yap et al., 2020) has shown that most AIbased MPPT algorithms have a faster convergence time, reduced steady-state oscillation, and higher efficiency but need a lot of processing and are expensive to implement. However, hybrid MPPT has been shown to have a good performance-to-complexity ratio. It incorporates the benefits of traditional and AI-based MPPT methodologies but choosing the appropriate hybrid MPPT techniques is still a challenge since each has advantages and disadvantages. In this research work, we proposed a suitable hybrid AI-based MPPT technique that exhibited the right balance between performance and complexity when utilizing AI in MPPT for solar power system optimization. To achieve this, we looked at the basic concept of maximum power point tracking and compared some AI-based MPPT algorithms for GMPP estimation. After evaluating and comparing these approaches, the most practical and effective ones were chosen, modeled, and simulated in MATLAB Simulink to demonstrate the method\u27s correctness and dependability in estimating GMPP under various solar irradiation and PV cell temperature values. The AI-based MPPT techniques evaluated include Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) trained Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) and PSO trained Neural Network (NN) MPPT. We compared these methods with Genetic Algorithm (GA)-trained ANFIS method. Simulation results demonstrated that the investigated technique could track the GMPP of the PV system and has a faster convergence time and more excellent stability. Lastly, we investigated the suitability of Buck, Boost, and Buck-Boost converter topologies for hybrid AI-based MPPT in solar energy systems under varying solar irradiance and temperature conditions. The simulation results provided valuable insights into the efficiency and performance of the different converter topologies in solar energy systems employing hybrid AI-based MPPT techniques. The Boost converter was identified as the optimal topology based on the results, surpassing the Buck and Buck-Boost converters in terms of efficiency and performance. Keywords—Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Genetic Algorithm, Adaptive Neural-Fuzzy Interference System (ANFIS), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO

Prognostics and health management of power electronics

Prognostics and health management (PHM) is a major tool enabling systems to evaluate their reliability in real-time operation. Despite ground-breaking advances in most engineering and scientific disciplines during the past decades, reliability engineering has not seen significant breakthroughs or noticeable advances. Therefore, self-awareness of the embedded system is also often required in the sense that the system should be able to assess its own health state and failure records, and those of its main components, and take action appropriately. This thesis presents a radically new prognostics approach to reliable system design that will revolutionise complex power electronic systems with robust prognostics capability enhanced Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) in applications where reliability is significantly challenging and critical. The IGBT is considered as one of the components that is mainly damaged in converters and experiences a number of failure mechanisms, such as bond wire lift off, die attached solder crack, loose gate control voltage, etc. The resulting effects mentioned are complex. For instance, solder crack growth results in increasing the IGBT’s thermal junction which becomes a source of heat turns to wire bond lift off. As a result, the indication of this failure can be seen often in increasing on-state resistance relating to the voltage drop between on-state collector-emitter. On the other hand, hot carrier injection is increased due to electrical stress. Additionally, IGBTs are components that mainly work under high stress, temperature and power consumptions due to the higher range of load that these devices need to switch. This accelerates the degradation mechanism in the power switches in discrete fashion till reaches failure state which fail after several hundred cycles. To this end, exploiting failure mechanism knowledge of IGBTs and identifying failure parameter indication are background information of developing failure model and prognostics algorithm to calculate remaining useful life (RUL) along with ±10% confidence bounds. A number of various prognostics models have been developed for forecasting time to failure of IGBTs and the performance of the presented estimation models has been evaluated based on two different evaluation metrics. The results show significant improvement in health monitoring capability for power switches.Furthermore, the reliability of the power switch was calculated and conducted to fully describe health state of the converter and reconfigure the control parameter using adaptive algorithm under degradation and load mission limitation. As a result, the life expectancy of devices has been increased. These all allow condition-monitoring facilities to minimise stress levels and predict future failure which greatly reduces the likelihood of power switch failures in the first place

An Integrated Fuzzy Inference Based Monitoring, Diagnostic, and Prognostic System

To date the majority of the research related to the development and application of monitoring, diagnostic, and prognostic systems has been exclusive in the sense that only one of the three areas is the focus of the work. While previous research progresses each of the respective fields, the end result is a variable grab bag of techniques that address each problem independently. Also, the new field of prognostics is lacking in the sense that few methods have been proposed that produce estimates of the remaining useful life (RUL) of a device or can be realistically applied to real-world systems. This work addresses both problems by developing the nonparametric fuzzy inference system (NFIS) which is adapted for monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis and then proposing the path classification and estimation (PACE) model that can be used to predict the RUL of a device that does or does not have a well defined failure threshold. To test and evaluate the proposed methods, they were applied to detect, diagnose, and prognose faults and failures in the hydraulic steering system of a deep oil exploration drill. The monitoring system implementing an NFIS predictor and sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) detector produced comparable detection rates to a monitoring system implementing an autoassociative kernel regression (AAKR) predictor and SPRT detector, specifically 80% vs. 85% for the NFIS and AAKR monitor respectively. It was also found that the NFIS monitor produced fewer false alarms. Next, the monitoring system outputs were used to generate symptom patterns for k-nearest neighbor (kNN) and NFIS classifiers that were trained to diagnose different fault classes. The NFIS diagnoser was shown to significantly outperform the kNN diagnoser, with overall accuracies of 96% vs. 89% respectively. Finally, the PACE implementing the NFIS was used to predict the RUL for different failure modes. The errors of the RUL estimates produced by the PACE-NFIS prognosers ranged from 1.2-11.4 hours with 95% confidence intervals (CI) from 0.67-32.02 hours, which are significantly better than the population based prognoser estimates with errors of ~45 hours and 95% CIs of ~162 hours

Data-driven prognostics based on evolving fuzzy degradation models for power semiconductor devices

The increasing application of power converter systems based on semiconductor devices such as Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) has motivated the investigation of strategies for their prognostics and health management. However, physicsbased degradation modelling for semiconductors is usually complex and depends on uncertain parameters, which motivates the use of data-driven approaches. This paper addresses the problem of data-driven prognostics of IGBTs based on evolving fuzzy models learned from degradation data streams. The model depends on two classes of degradation features: one group of features that are very sensitive to the degradation stages is used as a premise variable of the fuzzy model, and another group that provides good trendability and monotonicity is used for the auto-regressive consequent of the fuzzy model for degradation prediction. This strategy allows obtaining interpretable degradation models, which are improved when more degradation data is obtained from the Unit Under Test (UUT) in real time. Furthermore, the fuzzy-based Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction is equipped with an uncertainty quantification mechanism to better aid decisionmakers. The proposed approach is then used for the RUL prediction considering an accelerated aging IGBT dataset from the NASA Ames Research Center.Postprint (published version

Assessing Maximum Power Point Tracking Intelligent Techniques on a PV System with a Buck–Boost Converter

Classic and intelligent techniques aim to locate and track the maximum power point of photovoltaic (PV) systems, such as perturb and observe (P&O), fuzzy logic (FL), artificial neural networks (ANNs), and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFISs). This paper proposes and compares three intelligent algorithms for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control, specifically fuzzy, ANN, and ANFIS. The modeling of a single-diode equivalent circuit-based 3 kWp PV plant was developed and validated to achieve this purpose. Then, the MPPT techniques were designed and applied to control the buck–boost converter’s switching device of the PV plant. All three methods use the ambient conditions as input variables: solar irradiance and ambient temperature. The proposed methodology comprises the study of the dynamic response for tracking the maximum power point and the power generated of the PV systems, and it was compared to the classic P&O technique under varying ambient conditions. We observed that the intelligent techniques outperformed the classic P&O method in tracking speed, tracking accuracy, and reducing oscillation around the maximum power point (MPP). The ANN technique was the better control algorithm in energy gain, managing to recover up to 9.9% power

Fuzzy Logic Approach for Maximum Power Point Tracking Implemented in a Real Time Photovoltaic System

Photovoltaic (PV) panels are devices capable of converting solar energy to electrical without emissions generation, and can last for several years as there are no moving parts involved. The best performance can be achieved through maximum power point tracking (MPPT), which is challenging because it requires a sophisticated design, since the solar energy fluctuates throughout the day. The PV used in this research provided a low output voltage and, therefore, a boost-converter with a non-linear control law was implemented to reach a suitable end-used voltage. The main contribution of this research is a novel MPPT method based on a voltage reference estimator (VRE) combined with a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) in order to obtain the maximum power from the PV panel. This structure was implemented in a dSpace 1104 board for a commercial PV panel, PEIMAR SG340P. The scheme was compared with a conventional perturbation and observation (P&O) and with a sliding mode controller (SMC), where the outcomes demonstrated the superiority of the proposed advanced method.This research was funded by the Basque Government, Diputación Foral de Álava and UPV/EHU, respectively, through the projects EKOHEGAZ (ELKARTEK KK-2021/00092), CONAVANTER and GIU20/063

Design and implementation of machine learning techniques for modeling and managing battery energy storage systems

The fast technological evolution and industrialization that have interested the humankind since the fifties has caused a progressive and exponential increase of CO2 emissions and Earth temperature. Therefore, the research community and the political authorities have recognized the need of a deep technological revolution in both the transportation and the energy distribution systems to hinder climate changes. Thus, pure and hybrid electric powertrains, smart grids, and microgrids are key technologies for achieving the expected goals. Nevertheless, the development of the above mentioned technologies require very effective and performing Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs), and even more effective Battery Management Systems (BMSs). Considering the above background, this Ph.D. thesis has focused on the development of an innovative and advanced BMS that involves the use of machine learning techniques for improving the BESS effectiveness and efficiency. Great attention has been paid to the State of Charge (SoC) estimation problem, aiming at investigating solutions for achieving more accurate and reliable estimations. To this aim, the main contribution has concerned the development of accurate and flexible models of electrochemical cells. Three main modeling requirements have been pursued for ensuring accurate SoC estimations: insight on the cell physics, nonlinear approximation capability, and flexible system identification procedures. Thus, the research activity has aimed at fulfilling these requirements by developing and investigating three different modeling approaches, namely black, white, and gray box techniques. Extreme Learning Machines, Radial Basis Function Neural Networks, and Wavelet Neural Networks were considered among the black box models, but none of them were able to achieve satisfactory SoC estimation performances. The white box Equivalent Circuit Models (ECMs) have achieved better results, proving the benefit that the insight on the cell physics provides to the SoC estimation task. Nevertheless, it has appeared clear that the linearity of ECMs has reduced their effectiveness in the SoC task. Thus, the gray box Neural Networks Ensemble (NNE) and the white box Equivalent Neural Networks Circuit (ENNC) models have been developed aiming at exploiting the neural networks theory in order to achieve accurate models, ensuring at the same time very flexible system identification procedures together with nonlinear approximation capabilities. The performances of NNE and ENNC have been compelling. In particular, the white box ENNC has reached the most effective performances, achieving accurate SoC estimations, together with a simple architecture and a flexible system identification procedure. The outcome of this thesis makes it possible the development of an interesting scenario in which a suitable cloud framework provides remote assistance to several BMSs in order to adapt the managing algorithms to the aging of BESSs, even considering different and distinct applications