The five main reasons power supplies fail—and what can be done about it

by Kevin Parmenter, VP NA Applications Engineering, Excelsys Technologies, Electronic Products, Aug 18 2016

Focus:
Using data collected by power supply maker Excelsys Technologies, power supply repair specialists Power Clinic, and a survey in Ray Ridley’s Power Supplies group on LinkedIn, the author has ranked the top five causes of power supply failures for a range of power supply types. These causes are 1) fans, 2) capacitors, 3) power components (MOSFETs and diodes), 4) controller ICs and 5) environmental factors. Specific electrical, thermal, and reliability/component sourcing problems (counterfeit parts) are cited as the underlying reasons for the first four failures. The author gets very specific about what can go wrong, while also recommending strategies to avoid these problems. Besides being good reading for power supply designers, specifiers and integrators, this article should give non-specialists a sense of the effort required to produce power supplies with high reliability.

What you’ll learn:

• How to understand why power supplies fail
• How to design power supplies for high reliability

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