One of the major challenges for electric mobility is ensuring that the electric-vehicle (EV) power electronic converter — the “brains” controlling energy flow between the battery, motor, and grid — remain reliable over years of operation. Their failure can lead to costly repairs, performance degradation, or even vehicle downtime. In SCAPE project, IREC’s team has developed an innovative method to monitor and predict the health of these converters, focusing on the silicon carbide (SiC) power devices that enable higher efficiency and compactness.
The proposed approach uses a digital twin, a virtual replica that continuously mirrors the converter’s real electrical and thermal behavior. By combining data already available from the converter’s sensors with a simplified electro-thermal model, the digital twin can estimate the internal “state of health” of each individual SiC power device, without intrusive measurements or added hardware complexity.
This health assessment focuses on tracking small changes in each device’s on-state resistance, a key indicator of semiconductor aging, from the device case temperature. Over time, this resistance increases as the device wears out, leading to higher losses and heat. By identifying such degradation early, the system provides valuable information for predictive maintenance — warning the user and maintenance service before failures occur.
Beyond diagnostics, the same health data can feed into intelligent control strategies that dynamically distribute electrical stress and losses among the converter’s power devices. In other words, the converter can “take care of itself”: operating healthier devices more intensively while protecting aged ones, thus extending the overall lifetime and reliability of the vehicle’s powertrain.
This research, presented at the IEEE IECON 2025 Conference in Madrid, represents a step toward truly self-aware power converters. The next phase in SCAPE will involve validating this digital-twin-assisted health assessment on a real hardware prototype — paving the way for smarter, more durable, and sustainable electric vehicles.