A Current Fed Two-Inductor Boost Converter with Lossless Snubbing for Photovoltaic Module Integrated Converter Applications

Abstract

In this paper, a photovoltaic Module Integrated Converter (MIC) is implemented with a current fed two-inductor boost converter cascaded with a line frequency unfolder. The two-inductor boost cell is fed from a sinusoidally modulated two-phase buck converter with an interphase transformer and operates at a fixed duty cycle. The boost cell features the magnetic integration approach to combine the three cores of the two inductors and the transformer, the lossless snubbers to recover the switching losses and the silicon carbide rectifiers to avoid the reverse recovery losses. The two-inductor boost converter output interfaces with the mains via an unfolding stage, where the MOSFETs are driven by the photovoltaic gate drivers. Experimental results are provided for a 100 W converter developing a single phase 240 V 50 Hz output.