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TOPOLOGY EVALUATION OF HIGH GAIN DC-DC CONVERTERS FOR

PHOTOVOLTAIC APPLICATION 1

Article  in  International Journal of Electronics and Electrical Engineering · November 2019

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 International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN(p): 2347-6982, ISSN(e): 2349-204X
Volume-7, Issue-11, Nov.-2019, http://ijieee.org.in
TOPOLOGY EVALUATION OF HIGH GAIN DC-DC CONVERTERS
FOR PHOTOVOLTAIC APPLICATION
1
LAKSHMI PRABA.B, 2R.SEYEZHAI, 3N.B.MUTHUSELVAN, 4S.HARIKA
1
PG Student, Department of EEE, REC Lab, SSN College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, India
2
Associate Professor, Department of EEE, REC Lab, SSN College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, India
3
Associate Professor, Department of EEE, SSN College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, India
4
Research Scholar, Department of EEE, REC Lab, SSN College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, India
E-mail: 2seyezhair@ssn.edu.in

Abstract - The photovoltaic (PV) system has gained attention in recent days due to its non-polluting nature, easy availability
and high reliability compared to the conventional fossil fuels. But the output DC voltage from the PV source is very low and
hence a suitable power electronic converter is required. Various mixture of front end DC-DC converters have been
developed in the literature to achieve a high gain. But these topologies employ series connected configuration to extract
maximum power from PV. But this paper proposes a high gain Flying Capacitor Boost Converter (FLCBC) that achieves a
high gain at a low value of duty ratio. Moreover, this topology results in reduced voltage stress across the power switches,
reduced inductor size and high efficiency. The circuit configuration of the suggested topology is studied in
MATLAB/SIMULINK. The attractive feature of the proposed converter is compared with the boost converter and quadratic
boost converter. A prototype of the converter is rigged up to verify the simulation results.

Keywords - PV, Quadratic Flying Capacitor Boost Converter (QBC) and Ripple.

I. INTRODUCTION II. ANALYSIS OF DC-DC CONVERTER

The photovoltaic source is intermittent in nature and
its output varies depending on the sun’s irradiation
and temperature. The output should be regulated in
order to supply the loads. In order to accomplish this,
a suitable power conditioning circuit is necessary. A
huge gain and loss-less DC-DC converter can be
employed for the above mentioned purpose.
Numerous topologies of DC-DC converters have
been reported in the literature [1]. Boost Converter
(BC) is the popularly used one to step up the PV
voltage. But it cannot provide a voltage gain greater
than five times of the input, due to the losses
connected with the inductor, power semiconductor
switch and freewheeling diode and also the operation
at extreme duty ratio leads to extreme reverse
recovery problems. Due to this, conversion efficiency
gets reduced. To beat this issue, a Quadratic Boost
Converter (QBC) is proposed as it can provide a
greater voltage conversion ratio even at intense duty
ratio but the voltage stress of its main power device
is equal to the output voltage [2-3]. Furthermore,
these converters involve large inductor which
increases the size and cost.
TOPOLOGIES
The topologies of DC-DC converter analyzed in this
paper are as follows:
A. Boost Converter
B. Quadratic Boost Converter
C. Flying Capacitor Boost Converter
A. Boost Converter
Boost is a type of DC-DC converter that steps up the
applied input voltage and its circuit is shown in
Fig.1.The operation of the circuit is classified into
two modes. In mode-1, when the main switch is
turned on, the input inductor starts charging with the
diode in reverse biased state. In mode-2, the switch is
turned off, input inductor discharges with diode
forward biased and the voltage across the load is
equal to the sum of the input voltage and voltage
across the inductor thereby stepping up the source
voltage.

This paper investigates a two-stage flying capacitor

boost converter (FLCBC) which results in higher gain
[4], reduced inductor size , reduced input current
ripple, low voltage stress across both main switch and
freewheeling diode and overcomes the inrush current
problem faced in the boost converter. The proposed Figure 1 Circuit Diagram for Boost Converter
DC-DC converter configuration is studied and
simulation is done in SIMULINK. The performance B. Quadratic Boost Converter
indices of the converter are compared with the boost Quadratic boost converter (QBC) is a type of DC-DC
and quadratic boost topologies. A laboratory model is converter comprising a single active switch with
built to verify the simulation results.
Topology Evaluation of High Gain DC-DC Converters for Photovoltaic Application

62
 International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN(p): 2347-6982, ISSN(e): 2349-204X
Volume-7, Issue-11, Nov.-2019, http://ijieee.org.in
improved voltage gain and reduced voltage stress
compared to the boost converter. The circuit diagram
of QBC is shown in Fig.2.The basic operation
consists of two modes. In mode-1, when the switch S
is on, the diode D2 closes and D1 and D3 are open.
Inductor L1 and L2 is charged as shown in Fig.3.
Figure 2 Circuit Diagram for Quadratic Boost Converter
Figure 3 Mode-1 Equivalent Circuit
In mode-2, when the switch S is off, D1 and D3 are
closed, whereas D2 is open circuit and the current
through inductors L1 and L2 starts decreasing and
the capacitors C1 and C2 is charged. The equivalent
circuit is shown in Fig.4.
Figure 4 Mode-2 Equivalent circuit
C. Flying Capacitor Boost Converter
Flying capacitor boost converter possess an additional
capacitor in the input stage allowing the converter to
achieve high gain, reduced losses, high efficiency,
reduced ripple and voltage stresses across the main
device [5-7]. The circuit configuration of this
topology is that it has two main switches, flying
capacitor, output filter capacitor, two freewheeling
diodes and an inductor as shown in Fig.5.
Topology Evaluation of High Gain DC-DC Converters for Photovoltaic Application
63
Figure 5 Circuit Diagram for Flying Capacitor Boost
Converter
The operation of the circuit is divided into two modes
namely the inductor charging mode and energy
transfer to capacitor C1 and C2 mode. In the inductor
charging mode, both the switches S1 and S2 are turned
on, hence L1 starts charging with D1 and D2 in reverse
bias condition and output capacitor C2 supplying the
load. During the energy transfer to capacitor C1
mode, S1 is off whereas S2 is in on condition. The
energy stored in L1 is transferred to C1 and it gets
charged, D1 is in on state. After this, both S1 and S2
are turned off and inductor L1 gets charged with D1
and D2 in reverse biased condition. In the energy
transfer to capacitor C2, S1 remains in on state,
whereas S2 in off condition, with D2 conducting and
D1 switched off. During this mode, the energy
transfer from L1 to C2 takes place, thereby boosting
up the input voltage.
III. DESIGN EQUATIONS FOR CONVERTER
TOPOLOGIES
The converter topologies are designed with the
equations for conversion gain, capacitors and
inductors that are given below:
A. Conventional Boost Converter
The conversion gain is given by
 Where, D- duty ratio, Vo - output voltage,
Vin - input voltage.

 The inductor is given by

Where, ΔI = 30% to 50% of Io,

 The filter capacitor is given by

Where, ΔV = 3% to 5% of Vo
 International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN(p): 2347-6982, ISSN(e): 2349-204X
Volume-7, Issue-11, Nov.-2019, http://ijieee.org.in
B. Quadratic Boost Converter IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

The conversion gain is given by Based on the design equations, the components are
designed and its value for all the three converter
topologies is shown in table 1.

where Vo - output voltage, Vin - input voltage,

fs - switching frequency.

The inductor is given by

The inductor is given by

Table 1 Simulation Parameters

The SIMULINK circuit for the boost converter is

shown in Fig 6.

The filter capacitor is given by

C. Flying Capacitor Boost Converter

The conversion gain is given by Figure 6 SIMULINK diagram of boost converter

The output voltage waveform is shown in Fig 7,

where the output voltage obtained is about 24V.

The inductor is given by

Where, ΔIL=ΔIL2 –ΔIL1 (13)

The filter capacitor is given by

Figure 7 Boost converter output waveform

Where, Vo is output voltage, Vin and Vs is the input
voltage, fs is the switching frequency, D is the duty The SIMULINK circuit of quadratic boost converter
ratio, Io is the output current, n is the number of is shown in Fig 8.
stages.

Topology Evaluation of High Gain DC-DC Converters for Photovoltaic Application

64
 International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN(p): 2347-6982, ISSN(e): 2349-204X
Volume-7, Issue-11, Nov.-2019, http://ijieee.org.in
The MATLAB simulation circuit for PV module [8-
9] is shown in Fig 12.

Figure 8 SIMULINK diagram of QBC

The output voltage waveform for QBC is shown in Figure 12 SIMULINK model of PV
Fig 9, where the output voltage obtained is about
48.4V. The P-V characteristic is shown in Fig 13.

Figure 13 P-V characteristics of module

Figure 9 Quadratic boost converter output waveform
The SIMULINK circuit of FLCBC is shown in Fig
10.
Where, X axis- voltage, Y axis- power
The I-V characteristic of PV module is shown in Fig
14.

Figure 10 SIMULINK diagram of FLBC

The output voltage waveform for FLCBC is shown in Figure 14 I-V characteristic of module
Fig 11, where the output voltage obtained is about
49.2V. Where, X axis- voltage, Y axis- current

The SIMULINK circuit of flying capacitor boost

converter interfaced with PV is shown in Fig 15.

Figure 11 FLBC output waveform Figure 15 SIMULINK circuit for FLBC interfaced with PV

Topology Evaluation of High Gain DC-DC Converters for Photovoltaic Application

65
 International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN(p): 2347-6982, ISSN(e): 2349-204X
Volume-7, Issue-11, Nov.-2019, http://ijieee.org.in
The output voltage waveform for flying capacitor
boost converter with PV shown in Fig.16, where the
output voltage obtained is about 46V.
Figure 16 Output waveform for flying capacitor boost
converter interfaced with PV
Table 2 Comparison of performance parameters
From Table 2, it is observed that the flying capacitor
boost converter results in reduced input current,
output voltage ripple and higher gain compared to
other topologies.
V. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
From the simulation studies, it can be inferred that the
FLCBC ( Flying Capacitor Boost Converter) gives
high voltage gain for photovoltaic application with
reduced ripple. To validate the performance of the
high gain FLCBC, the hardware implementation is
carried out and its parameters is shown in table.3. The
hardware prototype includes the power circuit and
pulse generation using arduino board.
Table 3 Hardware Specifications
The gate pulse for S1 and S2 is generated using
Arduino and is shown in Fig.17 and hardware set-up
is shown in Fig.18.
Topology Evaluation of High Gain DC-DC Converters for Photovoltaic Application
66
Fig.17. Gating pulse generation for S1 & S2
Figure .18. Hardware implementation of FCBC
For an input of 3V, the output obtained is about
12.24V.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has investigated the flying capacitor boost
converter and its functionality was compared with the
boost and quadratic boost topologies. From the
results, it was found that the proposed FLCBC
topology resulted in reduced output voltage and
input current ripple and high gain. A laboratory
prototype was built and the simulation results were
verified practically. Hence, it is concluded that the
FLCBC is a relevant topology for practical
applications where high conversion gain and
efficiency is desirable with an easy structure such as
in photovoltaic systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors wish to thank the SSN Institutions for
providing the financial support in carrying out this
research work.
REFERENCE
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[2] Priya P, Basha SG, Niranjan VSV, Seyezhai R. Investigation
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[3] K. Tattiwong and C. Bunlaksananusorn, ‟Analysis, design
and experimental verification of a quadratic boost converter”
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 International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN(p): 2347-6982, ISSN(e): 2349-204X
Volume-7, Issue-11, Nov.-2019, http://ijieee.org.in
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