Photovoltaic power system with an interleaving boost converter for battery charger applications

Abstract

This paper proposes a photovoltaic (PV) power system for battery charger applications. The charger uses an interleaving boost converter with a single-capacitor turn-off snubber to reduce voltage stresses of active switches at turn-off transition. Therefore, active switches of the charger can be operated with zero-voltage transition (ZVT) to decrease switching losses and increase conversion efficiency. In order to draw the maximum power from PV arrays and obtain the optimal power control of the battery charger, a perturbation-and-observation method and microchip are incorporated to implement maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm and power management. Finally, a prototype battery charger is built and implemented. Experimental results have verified the performance and feasibility of the proposed PV power system for battery charger applications. © 2012 Sheng-Yu Tseng and Cheng-Tao Tsai.