An online method for condition based maintenance of aluminum electrolytic capacitors

The ever increasing demand for low percentage of the total harmonic distortion (%THD) and for high power factor (HPF) have resulted in the usage of high energy density aluminum electrolytic capacitors. These capacitors have the highest probability of failure in power electronic systems as per MIL-HDBK 217F standard. This paper presents a simple method to monitor the health of aluminum electrolytic capacitor based on parametric degradation in actual online conditions. A warning text message is send to user as the capacitor is approaching towards the end of its useful life at wear out condition and auto shut down of circuit occurs by receiving text message from the user end.