Reliability of power converters is vital to modern energy systems. This paper presents an experimentally validated and physics-based degradation framework to evaluate component aging under converter-induced thermal cycling. The proposed reliability assessment framework uses instantaneous current, voltage, and ambient temperature to determine self-heating and temperature-induced component degradation. In a case study, capturing thermal degradation via shared electrical stress shows a 69% reduction in a DC-DC converter’s RUL. This can be used to assess the reliability of any power electronic circuit under realistic operating conditions.
