To prevent failures, use high quality capacitors from name brands. Also, derate, derate. Keep capacitors as cool as possible and watch the ripple currents to make sure they are not excessively stressed. It’s important to know that storage life of electrolytic capacitors is limited to two years without power on the power supply, which is something that usually gets overlooked. As power designers we avoid electrolytic capacitors if we can, but if we can’t avoid them, we get the best we can find. (We specify two years of unpowered storage maximum to avoid the electrolyte becoming effected by the long term unpowered storage.) more