The impact of PV array inclination on the PV inverter reliability and lifetime

Abstract

The PV inverter lifetime is affected by mission profiles, which include the solar irradiance and ambient temperature of the installation site. In many investigations, the design for reliability approach (DFR) is used to evaluate the reliability of the PV inverter, where the solar irradiances are measured on a certain tilt and orientation angle. In most cases, the tilt is chosen to be the latitude angle of the location or slightly less. However, the latitude angle is not always the best choice in terms of energy and inverter degradation. This paper evaluates the lifetime of the PV inverter for different tilt angles of PV panels. The evaluation is based on the mission profiles of Algiers, Algeria, and the impact of tilt angle on the energy production and reliability of the PV inverter is investigated using mission profile based lifetime estimation