A New High-Gain DC-DC Converter with Continuous Input Current for DC Microgrid Applications

Abstract

The growth of renewable energy in the last two decades has led to the development of new power electronic converters. The DC microgrid can operate in standalone mode, or it can be grid-connected. A DC microgrid consists of various distributed generation (DG) units like solar PV arrays, fuel cells, ultracapacitors, and microturbines. The DC-DC converter plays an important role in boosting the output voltage in DC microgrids. DC-DC converters are needed to boost the output voltage so that a common voltage from different sources is available at the DC link. A conventional boost converter (CBC) suffers from the problem of limited voltage gain, and the stress across the switch is usually equal to the output voltage. The output from DG sources is low and requires high-gain boost converters to enhance the output voltage. In this paper, a new high-gain DC-DC converter with quadratic voltage gain and reduced voltage stress across switching devices was proposed. The proposed converter was an improvement over the CBC and quadratic boost converter (QBC). The converter utilized only two switched inductors, two capacitors, and two switches to achieve the gain. The converter was compared with other recently developed topologies in terms of stress, the number of passive components, and voltage stress across switching devices. The loss analysis also was done using the Piecewise Linear Electrical Circuit Simulation (PLCES). The experimental and theoretical analyses closely agreed with each other.