Modified SEPIC DC-DC Converter with Wide Step-up/Step-down Range for Fuel Cell Vehicles

The high efficient buck-boost DC-DC converter with wide step-up/step-down range is the way to solve the issue of voltage matching for commercial fuel cell vehicles with a strong hydrogen-electric hybrid. Based on the conventional SEPIC converter, the negative of one of the capacitors is connected with the negative of the power source to get more energy. A modified SEPIC buck-boost DC-DC converter with the advantages of wide voltage conversion range, continuous input current, common ground, and high conversion efficiency is proposed in this paper, meeting all the requirements of DC-DC converters for commercial fuel cell vehicles. On the basis of the steady-state analysis and comparison, the controller is designed based on the small-signal model. To verify the efficiency of the proposed converter, experimental prototypes are built using Si-based and SiC-based devices respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed buck-boost converter can effectively realize 2/3 times step-down and 5 times step-up. When disturbance and voltage dip occur, the adjust time of the control system is less than 200ms. The controller is verified to be robust and have fast responses. The maximum calculation, simulation and experimental efficiencies all exceed 96%, and the maximum efficiency of the SiC prototype under rated power is 96.1%.