A Coupled-Inductor Interleaved LLC Resonant Converter for Wide Operation Range

In this paper, a coupled-inductor interleaved LLC resonant converter (CI-ILLC) was proposed, which can achieve extensive operation range applications by multiplexing inductors and switches. In this proposed CI-ILLC, the coupled-inductor not only serves as a filter inductor but also plays the role of transformer to improve the power density. By changing the modulation methods, the proposed converter can work at three modes for a wide operation range, namely high gain (HG) mode, medium gain (MG) mode, and low gain (LG) mode. Moreover, the interleaved structure greatly reduces the current ripple and current stress of switches. Besides, in HG and MG modes, all switches can realize zero-voltage switching, with high energy transmission efficiency. Finally, the simulation and experiment results of the prototype with 120–200 V input and 50–200 V output are presented to verify the viability of the proposed converter.

Constant-Current and Constant-Voltage Output for Single-Switch WPT System with Composite Shielding Structure

With the development of wireless power transfer (WPT), the wireless charging has become a research hotspot. This paper proposes a novel single-switch hybrid compensation topology, which can change the compensation network to realize the constant-current (CC) and constant-voltage (CV) output. The zero voltage switching (ZVS) margin can be designed to increase the stability of the system. In addition, the magnetic coupler adopts a composite shielding structure composed of ferrite, nanocrystalline, and aluminium foil. The composite shielding structure has a better shielding effect on magnetic flux leakage, and its weight is lighter. The composite shielding structure is expected to be used in the wireless charging system of electric vehicles (EVs). Finally, an experimental prototype is built to verify the theoretical analysis, and the maximum efficiency can reach 91.4%.

Design of a High Efficiency High Step-Up/Step-Down Bidirectional Isolated DC–DC Converter

This paper presents a novel bidirectional DC–DC converter, equipped with a three-winding coupled inductor, that can be applied to high-voltage, bidirectional DC–DC energy conversion and meet battery charging and discharging requirements. The architecture consists of a semi-Z-source converter and a forward–flyback converter featuring a three-winding coupled inductor with an iron core. This proposed topology retains the current continuity characteristics of the low-voltage side, all switches possess the zero-voltage switching feature, and the switches on the low-voltage side in the step-down mode have a synchronous rectification function. A 500-W bidirectional converter is implemented to examine the practicality and feasibility of the proposed topology. The relatively streamlined design of the converter can greatly reduce production costs. In the step-up and step-down modes, the maximum energy conversion efficiencies are 95.74% and 96.13%, respectively.

Discontinuous Current Mode Modeling and Zero Current Switching of Flyback Converter

The flyback converters are widely used in low power applications. The switch typically requires 600 V breakdown voltage in order to perform large step-down voltage. Thus, slight variation on the switch control can either permanently damage the switch or decrease the efficiency of the power conversion. In order to achieve higher power efficiency, the previous literature suggested operating the flyback converter in the discontinuous current mode (DCM). It is then required to understand the critical conditions of the DCM through analyzing the dynamic behavior and discontinuous current mechanism. This paper started from the current waveform analyses, proceeded to the derivation of zero current switching (ZCS) formulation, and finally reached the necessary conditions for the DCM. The entire DCM operation was divided into three phases that subsequently affect the result of the zero voltage switching (ZVS) and then to the ZCS. The experiment shows a power efficiency of over 96% when the output power is around 65 W. The switch used in this paper is a Gallium Nitride High-Electron-Mobility Transistor (GaN HEMT) that is advantageous at the high breakdown voltage up to 800 V. The important findings from the experiments include that the output power increases with the increasing input DC voltage and the duty cycle is rather linearly decreasing with the increasing switching frequency when both the zero voltage switching (ZVS) and ZCS conditions are satisfied simultaneously.

Implementation of Snubber Circuits in a PV-Based Off-Grid Electric Vehicle Charging Station—Comparative Case Studies

With the penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), there have been paradigm shifts in the transportation sector. EVs are ideally considered to be clean and eco-friendly, but they can overload the existing grid infrastructure and significantly contribute towards carbon emissions depending on the source of charging. The ideal solution is to develop a charging infrastructure for EVs that is integrated with solar energy technology. This paper presents the design of a zero-voltage switching snubber-based bidirectional converter for an off-grid charging station for EVs. The proposed system includes a solar array with a boost converter, a bidirectional converter with snubber circuits and an energy storage unit. A comprehensive comparison between various types of snubbers, such as the resistive capacitive diode snubber, active clamp snubber and flyback snubber, is presented. This type of system configuration clamps the rail voltage, due to the difference in current between leakage inductance and low voltage side-fed inductor currents, resulting in reduced current spikes at the converter’s switches. Such a converter, therefore, leads to higher efficiency of the charging station for EVs. The design of a snubber-based off-grid charging station for EVs is formulated and validated in the MATLAB/Simulink environment.

Bidirectional Resonant Converter for DC Microgrid Applications

A bidirectional resonant converter is presented and verified in this paper for an electric vehicle battery charger/discharger system. The presented circuit can achieve forward and backward power operation, low switching losses on active devices, and wide output voltage operation. The circuit structure of the presented converter includes two resonant circuits on the primary and secondary sides of an isolated transformer. The frequency modulation approach is adopted to control the studied circuit. Owing to the resonant circuit characteristic, active devices for both forward (battery charge) and backward (battery discharge) power operation can be turned on at zero voltage switching. In order to implement a universal battery charger for different kinds of electric vehicle applications, the DC converter is demanded to have a wide output voltage range capability. The topology morphing between a full bridge resonant circuit and half bridge resonant circuit is selected to obtain high- and low-output voltage range operations so that the 200–500 V output voltage range is realized in the presented resonant converter. Compared to the conventional bidirectional converters, the proposed can be operated under a wide voltage range operation. In the end, a 1 kW laboratory prototype circuit is built, and experiments are provided to demonstrate the validity and performance of the presented bidirectional resonant converter.

Design and Implementation of an IMC-1DOF Controller Applied to MPPT Photovoltaic Systems Using ZVS Full-Bridge DC-DC Converter

This paper presents the design of an Internal Model Control – 1 Degree of Freedom (IMC-1DOF) controller applied to a Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS) Full-Bridge DC-DC converter that will be used in photovoltaic systems for Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), with the objective of developing a single phase micro inverter. It will be presented the mathematical modeling of this converter to control the input voltage aiming the application in MPPT and the design of the respective controller IMC-1DOF. The proposal testing and validation strategy was performed by comparison with a PI compensator. The performance of both controllers are evaluated and discussed.

Soft Switching of Non-Isolated Buck-Type Converter with Common-Ground Switch

A non-isolated buck converter, together with resonance and zero voltage transition to achieve zero voltage switching (ZVS) and zero current switching (ZCS), is presented herein to upgrade the conversion efficiency. In this circuit, the main switch and the auxiliary switch are connected to the common ground so as to make the two switches easily driven. Furthermore, these two switches take time division multiplexing operation. In addition, the pulse width modulation (PWM) control technique is utilized so as to render the output inductor and capacitor easily designed. In this paper, the theoretical derivation is first introduced, and secondly, some experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed topology.