A Generalized Current Trajectory Based Fault Diagnostic Method for Three-Phase Two-Level Inverters

Inverters play a vital role in the distributed generated energy systems. Hence, the reliability of the entire distributed energy system depends on the consistent and continuous operation of the inverter. Consequently, to maintain a reliable operation, effective condition monitoring and fault diagnostic schemes have to be incorporated. In this paper, a method based on current trajectory is analyzed for the fault detection and diagnosis of open-switch faults in three-phase two-level voltage source inverters (VSI). The current trajectory-based method of fault diagnosis has been already presented literature for the identification and localization of open-switch fault in the three-phase two-level VSI. The main drawback of the existing current trajectory method is that the fault diagnosis and detection is dependent on the phase currents selected to plot the current trajectories. Therefore, in this paper, a generalization is proposed for the fault diagnosis and diagnosis based on the current trajectory, which make the method independent of the selection of the phase current used to plot the current trajectory. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed generalization is verified by simulation and experiments in a laboratory prototype of three-phase two-level VSI.