Considerations on Combining Unfolding Inverters with Partial Power Regulators in Battery–Grid Interface Converters

Abstract

The application of electrochemical cells as a source unit of electrical energy is rapidly growing—used in electric vehicles and other electric mobility devices, as well as in energy supply systems—as energy storage, often together with renewable energy sources. The key element of such systems is the power electronic converter used for DC energy storage and AC grid interfacing. It should be bidirectional to charge and discharge the battery when it is necessary. Two-stage battery interface converters are the most common; their DC-DC stage controls the battery current and adjusts voltage, but the DC-AC stage (inverter or frontend) controls the current in the grid. The use of unfolding inverters in two-stage battery interfaces can have some advantages. In this case, the DC-DC converter produces half-sinewave pulsating voltages and currents, but the unfolding circuit changes the polarity of the voltages and currents and produces no switching losses. Another trend of modern power electronics is the principle of partial power processing. In this case, power electronic converters deal only with a part of the total power; therefore, losses in such converters are reduced. This paper considers combining unfolding frontends with partial power DC-DC converters that enable the further reduction in losses. In this paper, it is shown that such implementation of the partial power conversion principle in semi-DC-AC systems is really possible based on the real-time matching of the voltage of the partial-power DC-DC converter, battery voltage (which depends on its state of charge) and the rectified instantaneous voltage of the AC grid.