Selection of power electronic elements and circuits taking into account reliability and costs

The article presents selected issues connected with operational tests and analysis of reliability of electric elements and of power electronic elements. The article also discusses improvement of electric circuit reliability by employment of structural and parametric redundancy. The Monte-Carlo method was also proposed to be used in case of analysis of power electronic circuit reliability (PE circuits) taking account of random variation of electric load for these circuits. In case of computer simulation of this case it is possible to take account of self-correlation of electric (possibly mechanical) load for a given receiver of electric power.