IGBT Online-Temperature Monitoring using Turn-Off Delay as a Temperature Sensitive Electrical Parameter

Condition monitoring and remaining life prognosis are valuable techniques to detect situations that may lead to failures before equipment fails and allow maintenance to be scheduled before downtime occurs. In the case of power electronic converters the monitoring of the temperatures of the semiconductor chips within the power electronic modules is desirable for condition monitoring. An implementation of IGBT Online-Temperature sensing using the turn-off delay as a temperature sensitive electrical parameter is presented in this paper. Only few additional components are required for this solution. Experimental results show that with the implemented measuring circuitry the device temperature can be measured during switching operation of the converter.