Thermal Management of Photovoltaic Inverters: A Critical Review of Cooling Architectures, Climate Suitability, Reliability, And Field Deployment
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Photovoltaic (PV) inverters are subject to a coupled thermal problem with losses of semiconductors as a part of the problem, but also the variability of the solar resources, ambient temperature, installation geometry, dust, humidity, and enclosure thermal inertia. Thermomechanical fatigue in power modules and degradation of capacitors, solder layers, bond wires, interfaces and auxiliary components are accelerated by elevated junction and heat-sink temperatures. Thermal management of power electronics has been extensively discussed, but the evidence is scattered if the design goal is a field-deployed PV inverter, running under a field climate and mission profile. This critical review, therefore, compiles and summarizes the literature in the inverter-specific and transferable power-electronics domain of natural and forced-air cooling, advanced finned heat sinks, liquid cold plate and microchannels, heat pipes and vapor chambers, two-phase and immersion methods, evaporative cooling, multi-mode thermal systems, and active thermal control. Special emphasis is placed on the boundary conditions of practical importance not usually covered in laboratory studies: cooling parasitic power, water usage, psychrometric limits, condensation, leakage, corrosion, fouling, maintainability, measurement uncertainty, and the variations in the sun that occur from day to day. A framework for selecting cooling technologies based on climate requirements is proposed for matching cooling technologies with hot-dry, hot-humid, temperate, dusty, water-stressed, and high-power-density operating environments. Based on the review it can be seen that there is no one best architecture. Simple forced air, high heat-flux liquid cooling (with risk of leakage and the need for pumping), vapor chambers (which offer high spreading rates without being the answer to the last heat-rejection barrier), and evaporative approaches can be very interesting in hot-dry climates if water use, psychrometric limits, and condensation are managed. Multi-mode systems might provide greater operating flexibility, but this flexibility must be offset by auxiliary-resource and maintenance penalties. The future research needs include standardization of the thermal metrics for inverters, comparative experiments under the same condition, direct flow and psychrometric measurements, long-term field tests, thermal-aware control, and co-optimization of reliability, cooling energy, water use, cost, and maintainability.
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