Three‐phase step‐up/step‐down isolated dc‐dc converter with wide‐range duty cycle for low dc renewable energy sources applications

Summary Renewable sources of low voltage are an important resource in power generation systems. Many provide high output current at low voltage, as the photovoltaic modules and fuel cells systems, therefore, become more popular considering the safety requirements. In this paper, a novel current‐fed three‐phase dc‐dc converter with high‐frequency isolation transformer is proposed. This one has the main features as high dc voltage gain, reduced switches count, minimize the volume of the output/input filters, the frequency ripple of the input current and output voltage are three times higher than the switching frequency, best losses distribution and reduced stresses in the circuit. Moreover, it operates with wide‐range duty cycle, the soft‐start can be used, which allows the input current and the output voltage to be started gradually. Operating with a duty cycle of 1/3 and 2/3, the input current ripple is canceled. The proposed converter is studied qualitatively and quantitatively, being presented the operation principle in continuous and discontinuous conduction mode, dc voltage gain in each operation mode, and the voltage and current stresses for the power components sizing. To validate the operation of the proposed converter, the laboratory design example and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance and validate the claims of the converter for wide load variation. Experimental results are presented for a 4‐kW prototype, operating in R2 region for continuous conduction mode. Additionally, experimental results in R1 and R3 regions are obtained.