Electronics condition monitoring for improving sustainability of power electronics

Condition monitoring of electronics helps to optimize the use of products, with regards to condition based maintenance, ReUse and refurbishment, and adapting the reliability of a product more precisely to actual use profiles. One primary area of application is in power electronics, where availability, guaranteed capacity operation and planned maintenance play important roles for the economic and the ecological success of an application. In general, power electronics are crucial for the infrastructure of modern societies, so the improved performance of electronics regarding efficiency and reliability is a building block of emission reductions in energy generation, e-mobility and general transport. As a specific case, the life time monitoring of IGBT components is presented. The approach of condition monitoring is then broadened to the co-called innovation cluster Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul in Energy and Transport, which has been inaugurated in Berlin last year.