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# What Proportion of Televisions Fails Because of Power Electronics, and why? A Case Study Based on the Repair Café Dataset

Florentin Salomez

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Florentin Salomez. What Proportion of Televisions Fails Because of Power Electronics, and why? A Case Study Based on the Repair Café Dataset. 2025. hal-05484049

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# What Proportion of Televisions Fails Because of Power Electronics, and Why? A Case Study Based on the Repair Café Dataset.

Florentin Salomez

G2Elab, UMR5269

Univ. Grenoble-Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP

Grenoble, France

florentin.salomez@g2elab.grenoble-inp.fr

**Abstract**—The Repair Café dataset about repairs performed on television is used to characterize the occurrence of fault due to the power supply unit. The capacitors have been identified as the faultiest components within a power supply. Another finding is a rate of 70% of working power supplies thrown away with the television because of the impossibility to repair the other parts of the product.

**Keywords**— repair, WEEE, power electronics, sustainability, circular economy

## I. INTRODUCTION

E-Waste or more formally Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) are rising steadily each year (around 2.3 million of tons each year since 2010) [1]. According to the Global E-waste Monitor report from

2024 [1], in 2022, about 62 million tons of WEEE have been generated worldwide. They pose a serious threat to the environment and the people and represent a shortfall in terms of materials recovery if not handled properly.

These are some of the reasons why their generation should be decreased thanks to circular economy strategies (reuse, repair, reconfigure, refurbish ...) [2]. The barriers to these strategies should be identified in order to integrate counter-measures at the design stage of the products. In addition, the stream of components and subassemblies should be quantified to evaluate potential recovery of parts or materials.

<table><caption>TABLE I. DESCRIPTION OF THE FIELDS, DATATYPE AND POSSIBLE VALUES USED IN THE REPAIRMONITOR© DATABASE.</caption><thead><tr><td>Id.</td><td>Field Name</td><td>Datatype</td><td>Possible values</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>Repair Id</td><td>String</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Repair date</td><td>Date</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Repair Cafe number</td><td>Integer</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Repair Cafe name</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Country</td><td>Country codes</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Kind of product,</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Category,</td><td>String</td><td>Household appliances non-electric, Household appliances electric, Display and sound equipment, Computer equipment / phones, Furniture, Clocks / alarm clocks, Tools electric, Other, Toys non-electric, Textile, Tools non-electric, Bicycles, Jewelry, Toys electric, None</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Brand,</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Model, type number and/or serial number,</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>(Estimated) Year of production,</td><td>Integer</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Problem description + probable cause,</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>Defect found,</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Has the product been repaired?</td><td>String</td><td>yes, no, half</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>If yes: what did you do to repair it?</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>If half repaired: what did you do, what advice did you give?</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>If not repaired: why could you not repair it (list)?</td><td>String</td><td>No way to fix the product, Spare parts not available at repair session, Unidentified failure, Lack of equipment at repair location, No way to open the product, Too worn out, Spare parts not available on the market, Spare parts too expensive, Too time consuming, Repair information not available, None</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>If not repaired: why could you not repair it (open answer)?</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>Reparability of product (1 = difficult, 10 = easy),</td><td>Integer</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>Did you use repair information?</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td>Where did this information come from?</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>21</td><td>Source repair information (url website),</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr><tr><td>22</td><td>Do you have any suggestions for other repairers of this (or similar) product?</td><td>String</td><td>Free text</td></tr></tbody></table>
The Repair Café associations are already gathering and sharing data about repairs thanks to the Repair Monitor© [3]. These associations are based on volunteer work to help citizen to repair their products. These data are exploited in this article to study the impact of the Power Supply Unit (PSU) in the repairs of one kind of product, the television (TV).

The goals of this article are to study the occurrence and the reasons of the faults due to power electronics in TVs, their repair rate when the fault is due to power electronics and also the rate of disposal with a working power electronics subsystem, in other words whatever the fault but power electronics. This valuable information could inform the power electronics designer towards changes of design to improve the reusability, repairability and reconfigurability of the PSU, hence closing the loop. One goal of this article is also to suggest improvement to the repair survey performed in the Repair Cafés to improve the data usability towards the power electronics designers.

First the methodology of analysis and the dataset are presented in section II, second the results and discussion are detailed in section III and section IV concludes this article.

## II. METHOD OF ANALYSIS

### A. Data presentation

The data are collected by volunteer work in the Repair Cafés all around the world. These data are collected since 2016 and are available at [3] as an .xlsx file and presented with a dashboard on the RepairMonitor© website. Each row of data is tagged with a unique identifier called "Repair Id". The other fields with their datatype and possible values are presented in Tab. I. The main difficulties encountered during the analysis of this dataset are the free text fields which are very hard to study automatically and the diversity of languages used in these field, especially the ones regarding the defect and the repair which are written in the mother tongue of the repairer. The "Kind of Product" field is translated by the authors of the dataset which allows for automation. The other difficulties are mainly due to the reporting accuracy, the different interpretations of each field by the repairers and errors in the data like misspelling or the lack of a clear taxonomy, as mentioned in [4]. These difficulties are exemplified in the Tab. II with a selected subset of data thanks to a query with the word "supply" in the fields "Problem description + probable cause" and "Defect found": the "Problem description" of the first entry is actually the defect and the "Defect found" is actually the solution. Example of reporting inaccuracies and diversity of interpretation of the field name. The second entry is very laconic and is due to the impossibility of the repair as mentioned in the answer of the field "If not repaired: why could you not repair it (open answer)?": Too difficult to fix. No circuit diagram; the last entry "Defect found" is too generic.

<table><caption>TABLE II. DATA ERROR DUE TO DIFFICULTY OF INTERPRETATION OF THE FIELD NAME.</caption><thead><tr><td>Repair Id</td><td>Problem description + probable cause</td><td>Defect found</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>0146_2022_0611_766</td><td>Faulty capacitor</td><td>Power supply is working. Unable to locate service manual. Capacitor CD15 short circuited.</td></tr><tr><td>0070_2019_0609_017</td><td>Power supply problem</td><td>Power supply problem</td></tr><tr><td>0387_2024_0405_023</td><td>Power supply tested and was fine. The problem might have been with the backlighting</td><td>Doesn't work</td></tr></tbody></table>

There is also the problem of the *half repair*, which described an ongoing repair. This repair might be finished by the owner of the product once a spare part has been received for example, or in a second session at the same or at another Repair Café. In the dataset there is no means to record a second session on the same product. Therefore, duplicate object might appear in the data. To avoid that half repaired objects should be discarded. But at the same time the half-repaired entries provide valuable data on the repair or the fault, especially if a spare part has been ordered.

### B. Data annotation

In order to overcome the possibility of misinterpretation of the data, new fields presented in Tab. III are added to tag each entry in a precise manner.

These fields allow to analyze whether the fault is due to electronics or not and if yes whether it is a PSU fault or not. Then if the information is precise enough, the faulty component can be identified (capacitor, fuse, ...). In case of repair, the repair action is specified (PSU or components replacement). On the contrary, in case of not repaired, the main reason is specified if not already in the original dataset.

The algorithm shown in Fig. 1 has been used and applied thanks to a python script. This algorithm allows to by-pass some fields and leaves them with the default value (bold italic in Tab. III) to speed the up the annotation process.

### C. Data selection

There is at the time of writing around 127 000 entries in the dataset. Some sort of data selection is required to study and annotate manually only a subset of this dataset. The manual annotation is required to extract value from the free text fields regarding problem description, defect found and repair actions as described in the previous subsection.
<table><caption>TABLE III. ANNOTATION FIELD ADDED TO THE ORIGINAL DATASET, WITH DEFAULT VALUE IN BOLD ITALIC.</caption><thead><tr><th>Id.</th><th>Field Name</th><th>Datatype</th><th>Possible value</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>23</td><td>Is the fault linked to the electronics?</td><td>String</td><td>yes, no, not communicated, <strong>None</strong></td></tr><tr><td>24</td><td>Which part of electronic is faulty?</td><td>String</td><td>Power, Other, <strong>None</strong></td></tr><tr><td>25</td><td>Has a faulty component been identified?</td><td>Boolean</td><td>True, <strong>False</strong></td></tr><tr><td>26</td><td>Which components are faulty? (multiple choice)</td><td>String</td><td>Capacitor, Fuse, Relay, Cord, Transistor, Diode, Integrated Circuit, Other, Not Communicated, <strong>None</strong></td></tr><tr><td>27</td><td>If the power supply has been repaired or half repaired, which part have been replaced?</td><td>String</td><td>Power Supply replacement, Components replacement, <strong>None</strong></td></tr><tr><td>28</td><td>If the power supply has not been repaired and an open answer provided in field #17 in Tab. I, do you agree with field #16 in Tab. I?</td><td>Boolean</td><td>True, <strong>False</strong></td></tr><tr><td>29</td><td>If no, can you choose the reasons among the list? (multiple choice)</td><td>String</td><td>See field #16 in Tab. I, <strong>None</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

The extraction of the meaning of the free text fields depends mainly on the languages skills of the person annotating the data. In this case, the first author knows enough of French and English to interpret correctly the data. So, the selected country codes are FR, GB and US.

Among the selected data, the *kind of product* television (TV) has been retained because of the power electronics board usually present inside. This leads to a subset of 479 entries to annotate manually thanks to the organigram presented in the previous subsection. The number of entries might be too small to answer some sub-questions of this study. The annotation of more entries in other languages are in the perspective of this work to strengthen the interpretation and results presented here. The data are available in [5].

### III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The annotation process has been applied to the selected subset described earlier in III. C (televisions in FR, GB, US). The results are presented and discussed hereafter.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1. Flowchart of the helper python script used to annotate one entry in the dataset with the new fields 23 to 30 described in Tab. III.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2. Graphs of the breakdown of (a) electronic fault and in particular (b) Power Supply Unit (PSU).</figcaption></figure>

<table><caption>TABLE IV. EXAMPLE OF DIFFICULT-TO-INTERPRET GENERIC TERMS TO ASSESS IF THE FAULT IS PSU RELATED OR NOT.</caption><thead><tr><th>Repair Id</th><th>Problem description + probable cause</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>0495_2023_0701_1203</td><td>Blown <u>circuit board</u></td></tr><tr><td>0390_2024_0328_010</td><td><u>Carte mère remplacée mais l'écran est HS, réparation de l'écran (FR)</u><br/>Motherboard replaced but screen is out of order, screen repair</td></tr></tbody></table>
### A. Type of failure

Most of the televisions that are brought to a Repair Café have a failure related to electronics of 55% of cases as presented in the Fig. 2 (a). There are also numerous entries in the subset that are not correctly filled or not filled at all for the field of the description of the problem (35%) which leads to almost 37.5% of the data that are not usable.

When the failure is due to electronics, the power supply unit (PSU) is the cause in 40% of cases as presented in Fig. 2 (b). This number might be underestimated because of difficulties of interpretation that are presented in the Tab. IV. Indeed, Circuit board or Motherboard or main PCB are too generic to assume which part of the electronics is faulty. This uncertainty has not been characterized, but when the terms were to generic the Other option was chosen. In addition, when only information about the replaced diode have been provided, the Other option has also been chosen. Indeed, in French "diode" might be understood as power "diode" or "Light Emitting Diode (LED)", both components are present in a TV.

### B. Faulty components

When the fault is due to PSU, a faulty component has been identified in 46% (49 entries) of the cases as shown in Fig. 3 (a). The most frequent faulty component is the capacitor (almost 40% of the cases), the second is the diode and the third is the ON/OFF switch as illustrated in Fig. 3 (b).

### C. Repair status

The repair status indicates if the product has been:

- repaired (yes),

- half repaired (half),

- not repaired (no).

According to Fig. 4, when the fault is due to PSU in TVs, the product has been repaired in 37.7% of cases and not repaired

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3. Graphs of the breakdown of (a) identified or not faulty component and (b) which one.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 4. Graphs of the breakdown of repaired or not PSU.</figcaption></figure>

<table><caption>TABLE V. ARCHETYPES OF HALF REPAIRED CASES.</caption><thead><tr><td>Repair Id</td><td>Problem description + probable cause</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>0513_2023_0416_004</td><td>Bad power supply - ordered</td></tr><tr><td>0462_2024_0113_010</td><td>Power supply board blown. Replacement is available at £40. Repairs declined</td></tr><tr><td>0156_2022_1126_007</td><td>s'éteint au bout de 2min (FR)<br>turn off after 2 min<br>Lié à la surchauffe. Nettoyage. A tester dans la durée. (FR)<br>Overheating issue. Cleaning. To be tested over the long term.</td></tr></tbody></table>

in the same proportion. Without the consideration of "half" repair cases the repair rate due to a faulty PSU is 50%.

The reasons why the PSU is not repaired will be explored in the next subsection.

The cases of "half" repair are difficult to integrate in the results because of the many cases covered by "half". The Tab. V shows some archetypes:

1. ongoing repair with a spare part that has been ordered,

2. not repaired,

3. cleaning, but with no certainty about the success of the repair.

The "half" repair cases bring also the risk of duplicate entries due to ongoing repairs registered a second time if the owner of the product needs help to change the spare part for example. This is the reason why in this article "half" cases are left unchanged and counted separately.

The breakdown of the repair actions performed in case of a repaired or half repaired PSU are presented in the Fig. 5 (a) and Fig. 5 (b) respectively. In the case of completely repaired product, the most frequent repair action is the components
Thanks to which repair action
the PSU has been repaired?

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 5. Graphs of the breakdown of repaired action performed in case of repaired PSU or half repaired PSU.</figcaption></figure>

If not repaired: why could you not repair it?

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 6. Graphs of the breakdown of the reasons why a PSU of a TV is not repaired in a Repair Café.</figcaption></figure>

replacement (almost 60% of cases). On the contrary, in the case of half repaired product, the most frequent action is the PSU replacement (almost 42% of cases). The exact reason of the PSU replacement is rarely described (damaged chip in one occurrence). This seems logical because half repairs are delayed by the order and delivery process of a spare PSU (for all these PSU replacement cases this is the explanation given in the free text field), in comparison to a component swap with spare one directly available at the Repair Café.

## D. Barriers to repair and possible solutions for the designer and seller

The reasons a TV is not repaired are multiple and detailed in Fig. 6. The first reason is the cost of the spare parts that are too expensive in comparison to the price of the new product in more than 30% of cases. For all the entries in these 30% (10 entries read manually), to achieve the repair, a full PSU replacement was needed. Then unidentified failure and non-availability of spare parts represent both 15% of cases. The impossibility of repair is another 13% of cases. These barriers have also been identified in a report from ADEME (French agency for ecological transition) about the component repair for EEE [6].

The first barrier could be addressed thanks to a repair bonus to help decrease the price of the spare part and hence the repair like in France with the *Bonus Réparation* from ADEME [7]. According to [8], this kind of financial

When the TV is not repaired,
which part is faulty?

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 7. Graphs of the breakdown of the faulty part of not repaired TV.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 8. Graphs of the breakdown of the different brands of TVs repaired or not in a Repair Café.</figcaption></figure>

incentive is relevant regarding improved sales of the repair shops and cheaper repairs for the consumers.

The second and the third ones need a change in design practices to help repairer:

- to spot the failure thanks to information directly available on the board, or schematics to download;

- to find compatible parts easily thanks to standardization.

## E. Potential sources of materials and components

When the TV is not repaired it might become an interesting source of materials, components or subparts for the faulty PSU. According to Fig. 7, in 70% of cases, the fault is not due to the PSU at all. This means that, theoretically, 70% of the PSU board could be salvaged for reuse, repair or reconfiguration.

The main difficulty of storage of salvaged PSU or parts at the scale of a Repair Café seems the number of brands (120 different brands for 479 TVs registered in the dataset) and models (only 65 different models registered in the dataset because of missing data) encountered in a Repair Café. The breakdown of the most frequent brands is shown anonymously in Fig. 8.

# IV. CONCLUSION

The dataset used in this article comes from volunteer work in the Repair Cafés and needed annotation to be properly analyzed and to convey valuable information to the designer. This annotation has been performed to answer specific question about PSUs. Only a subset of the large amount of data available has been annotated for practical reasons.

It has been found after data annotation that 40% of the failure of broken TVs that are brought to Repair Cafés are due to PSUs. When a faulty component has been identified, in 40% of the cases it is a capacitor.

The main reason why a TV is not repaired is the price of the spare parts. Indeed, a PSU replacement is too costly in comparison to the price of a new TV. This fact shows the
need to improve the design of the PSU board to achieve
component repair more easily.

Finally, the not repaired TVs might have in 70% of
cases a working PSU that is thrown away with the TV. The
high number of brands and models makes it impractical to
keep spare parts at the Repair Cafés and call for greater
standardization in the PSU board electrical and
mechanical interface to improve reusability whatever the
model and the brand. This kind of standardization have
been achieve in the past in the personal computer sector
with the ATX standard (now in version 3.0 [9]).

The perspectives for this work are multiple:
i) improvement of the repairer form to gather valuable
information for the designer, ii) increase the number of
annotated entries and widen the study to other PSU based
electrical appliances, iii) suggest methodology to increase
the reuse and repair of current PSU or components in
current WEEE stream.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank the Repair Café International
Foundation for the public availability of the dataset and
the volunteer repairers for their time and effort to
document each repair.

I would like to thank Associate Professor Pierre
Lefranc from Grenoble INP and Ph. D. Student Gaëtan
Heller from Grenoble INP for their insights and
proofreading.

REFERENCES

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