Design for Reuse: residual value monitoring of power electronics' components.

Extending electronics' lifespan is a major issue in Design for Sustainability. Power electronic components are a continuously growing part of our daily good service usages from the laptop charger (10-100 W), the home air conditioning (1-10 kW), the solar power plant (1-100 kW), to the railway electric mobility (1-100 MW). They drastically contribute to increasing the e-waste stream since device volume is proportional to power ratings. Repairing conversion systems challenges designers in the way the systems should be designed to be maintained over the years. In addition, introducing circular economy with electronic component (or subsystems) reuse supposes evaluating their residual value in case of power electronics. This paper firstly introduces from the state of the art the residual value evaluations to define the relevant parameters that should be included in the case of power electronic components, and a method to estimate this value is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]