• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.34-40
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• 2012

In this paper, voltage clamped tapped-inductor boost converter with high voltage conversion ratio is proposed. The conventional tapped-inductor boost converter has a serious drawback such as high voltage stresses across all power semiconductors due to the high resonant voltage caused by the leakage inductor of tapped inductor. Therefore, the dissipative snubber is essential for absorbing this resonant voltage, which could degrade the overall power conversion efficiency. To overcome these drawbacks, the proposed converter employs a voltage clamping capacitor instead of the dissipative snubber. Therefore, the voltage stresses of all power semiconductors are not only clamped as the output voltage but the power conversion efficiency can also be considerably improved. Moreover, since the energy stored in the clamp capacitor is transferred to the output side together with the input energy, the proposed converter can achieve the higher voltage conversion ratio than the conventional tapped-inductor boost converter. Therefore, the proposed converter is expected to be well suited to various applications demanding the high efficiency and high voltage conversion ratio. To confirm the validity of the proposed circuit, the theoretical analysis and experimental results of the proposed converter are presented.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.349-356
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• 2014

As the turns ratio of the tapped-inductor contributes to the step-up ratio, the tapped-inductor boost (TIB) converter has significantly increased level of difficulties in its analysis and design compared to the conventional boost converter where the duty ratio is the sole factor affecting the step-up ratio. In this paper, the operation of the continuous current mode TIB converter is briefly reviewed, the characteristics are analyzed in detail, and a design guideline optimizing the loss in the tapped-inductor is presented with a practical design example. Finally, experimental results from a 12V/120V prototype for 0.25A LED driver application are also presented to confirm the design.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.157-163
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• 2014

This paper proposes a two-stage step-down buck and a tapped-inductor boost cascaded converter for high efficiency photovoltaic micro-inverter applications. The proposed inverter is a new structure to inject a rectified sinusoidal current into a low-frequency switching inverter for single-phase grid with unity power factor. To build a rectified-waveform of the output current. the converter employs both of a high efficiency step-up and a step-down converter in cascade. In step-down mode, tapped inductor(TI) boost converter stops and the buck converter operates alone. In boost mode, the TI converter operates with the halt of buck operation. The converter provides a rectified current to low frequency inverter, then the inverter converts the current into a unity power-factor sinusoidal waveform. By applying a TI, the converter can decrease the turn-on ratios of the main switch in TI boost converter even with an extreme step-up operation. The performance validation of the proposed design is confirmed by an experimental results of a 120W hardware prototype.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.636-646
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• 2013

A single-phase tapped-inductor boost converter has been proposed previously. However, detailed characterization and performance analysis were not conducted. This paper presents a detailed characterization, performance analysis, and design expressions of a single-phase tapped-coupled-inductor boost converter. Expressions are derived for average and RMS input current as well as for RMS input and output capacitor current ripple. A systematic approach for sizing the tapped-coupled inductor, active switch, and output diode is presented; such approach has not been reported in related literature. This study reveals that sizing of the inductor has to be based on current ripple requirement, turns ratio, and load. Conditions that produce discontinuous inductor current are also discussed. Analysis of a non-ideal converter operating in continuous conduction mode is also conducted. The expression for the voltage ratio considering the coupling coefficient is derived. The suitability of the converter for high-voltage step-up applications is evaluated. Factors that affect the voltage boost ratio are also identified. The effects of duty ratio and load variation on the performance of the converter are also investigated. The theoretically derived characteristics are validated through simulations. Experimental results obtained at a low power level are included to validate the analytical and simulation results. A good agreement is observed among the analytical, simulation, and experimental results.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2013.07a
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• pp.177-179
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• 2013

This paper presents an LED driver which requires a high voltage gain (5-6 times). To achieve a high voltage gain, the tapped-inductor boost converter topology was used and through the analysis of converter's steady-state and its dynamic characteristics, the product design's reliability and validity were verified.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.395-401
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• 2015

This paper proposes a new bidirectional DC-DC converter with high efficiency. The proposed converter is composed of a flyback and a tapped-inductor boost converter to satisfy extreme operating conditions with low cost. The outputs are connected in series to achieve a high-voltage step-up. In the reverse direction, the proposed converter has an extreme step-down voltage. In this study, the proposed converter was employed with a 100 W hardware prototype. To design the controller, a small-signal transfer function of the proposed converter is derived. For PV power conditioning systems, a maximum power point tracking method is applied with perturb and observe method. To verify the operation of the bidirectional power flow, the current controller is applied. All of the controllers are employed with a digital signal processor.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.74-75
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• 2010

As global warming due to burning fossil fuels and natural resource depletion issues have emerged, the development of renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics (PV) has been brought to recent interest. Amongst the vast efforts to harvest and convert solar energy into electricity, the module integrated converters (MIC) has become a worthy topic of research for grid-connected photovoltaic systems. Due to the required high-boosting qualities, only a restricted amount of DC/DC converter topologies can be applied to MICs. This paper investigates the possibility of a tapped-inductor boost converter as a candidate for PV MICs. A dual-inductor interleaving scheme operating slightly above the boundary of the two conduction modes (BCM) is suggested for reduction of input current ripple and minimization of component stress. A digital controller is used for implementation, assuring maximum power tracking and transfer while providing sufficient computational space for other grid connectivity applications, etc. For verification, a 200W converter is designed and simulated via computer software including component losses. High efficiency over a wide power range proves the feasibility of the proposed PV MIC system.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.766-778
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• 2013

The depletion of natural resources and renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic (PV) energy, has been highlighted for global energy solution. The PV power control unit in the PV power-generation technology requires a high step-up DC-DC converter. The conventional step-up DC-DC converter has low efficiency and limited step-up ratio. To overcome these problems, a novel high step-up DC-DC converter using an isolated switched capacitor cell is proposed. The step-up converter uses the proposed transformer and employs the switched-capacitor cell to enable integration with the boost inductor. The output of the boost converter and isolated switched-capacitor cell are connected in series to obtain high step-up with low turn-on ratio. A hardware prototype with 30 V to 40 V input voltage and 340 V output voltage is implemented to verify the performance of the proposed converter. As an extended version, another novel high step-up isolated switched-capacitor single-ended DC-DC converter integrated with a tapped-inductor (TI) boost converter is proposed. The TI boost converter and isolated-switched-capacitor outputs are connected in series to achieve high step-up. All magnetic components are integrated in a single magnetic core to lower costs. A prototype hardware with 20 V to 40 V input voltage, 340 V output voltage, and 100 W output power is implemented to verify the performance of the proposed converter.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.632-640
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• 2014

For low-power high-frequency LED driver applications in small form factor mobile products, a high-efficiency boundary conduction mode tapped-inductor boost converter is proposed. In the proposed converter, the switch and the diode achieve soft-switching, the diode reverse-recovery is alleviated, and the switching frequency is very insensitive to output voltage variations. The circuit is quantitatively characterized, and the design guidelines are presented. Experimental results from an LED backlight driver prototype for a 14 inch notebook computer are also presented.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1468-1479
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• 2015

Renewable energy resources such as wind and photovoltaic power generation systems demand a high step-up DC-DC converters to convert the low voltage to commercial grid voltage. However, the high step-up converter using a transformer has limitations of high voltage stresses of switches and diodes when the transformer winding ratio increases. Accordingly, conventional studies have been applied to series-connect multioutput converters such as forward-flyback and switched-capacitor flyback to reduce the transformer winding ratio. This paper proposes new single-ended converter topologies of an isolation type and a non-isolation type to improve power efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and output ripple. The first proposal is an isolation-type charge-pump switched-capacitor flyback converter that includes an extreme-ratio isolation switched-capacitor cell with a chargepump circuit. It reduces the transformer winding number and the output ripple, and further improves power efficiency without any cost increase. The next proposal is a non-isolation charge-pump switched-capacitor-flyback tapped-inductor boost converter, which adds a charge-pump-connected flyback circuit to the conventional switched-capacitor boost converter to improve the power efficiency and to reduce the efficiency degradation from the input variation. In this paper, the operation principle of the proposed scheme is presented with the experimental results of the 100 W DC-DC converter for verification.