Towards Digital Twin Driven High-Reliability Power Electronic Converters

Power electronic converters (PECs) are fundamental components in various safety-critical applications such as electrified transportation and renewable energy generation. Therefore, ensuring the reliability of PECs throughout their entire life cycle has become increasingly important. In this context, owing to the ongoing digitalization and data engineering trends, digital twin (DT) technology has become a promising tool to improve the reliability and performance of PECs through online health monitoring and intelligent decision-making. This paper presents a comprehensive and in-depth review of DT development for high-reliability PECs. A four-stage systematic framework is proposed to review the development of DT: 1) converter-level and system-level application types, 2) implementation objectives, 3) modeling methodologies, and 4) supporting mathematical algorithms. In addition, the paper explores the concept of active versus passive DT decisions based on their objectives and interaction with the physical controller of PECs. To provide more insight into health monitoring objectives, a topology-oriented classification of DT implementations is presented, which enables readers to locate and understand relevant DT solutions based on various converter types with electrical and thermal modeling. This paper aims to serve as a practical guide for researchers and engineers involved in the development or analysis of DT models for PECs.