Life Expectancy of DC Fast Charger

Effect of load profile on thermal degradation of semiconductors

Master thesis (2023)

Authors

A. Bhadury Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

A. Shekhar DC systems, Energy conversion & Storage - EEMCS (mentor)
F. Kardan Halvaei DC systems, Energy conversion & Storage - EEMCS (mentor)
P. Bauer DC systems, Energy conversion & Storage - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
M. Cvetkovic Intelligent Electrical Power Grids - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2023 Abheek Bhadury
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Published Date

28-08-2023

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

There will soon be a huge influx of EV chargers required in the coming years. Therefore it is important to find out the lifetime of EV chargers like the DC Fast Charger for business cases. These chargers are a combination of multiple power converters to help regulate the grid AC voltage to something that can be used to charge the battery. Multiple Industrial surveys have shown that the most vulnerable parts of power converters are the power semiconductors used inside them. Moreover, research shows that most of the failure in these EV chargers is due to thermal cycling which causes thermo-mechanical fatigue. While there are studies that estimate the lifetime of these semiconductors, it is seldom done in the context of EV charging load profiles. These EV charging load profiles are responsible for long-term power cycling contrary to short-term power cycling which is generally done to estimate the lifetime of the semiconductors. This thesis shall thus choose a popular DC Fast Charger power converter, feed in
a load profile and analyse the effects of thermal degradation of the switches and rectifier diodes present in the circuit. This data will then be used to make an estimate of how long the whole power converter will last thus leading to the lifetime of the DC Fast Charger.