High step-up active-clamp converter with an input current doubler and a symmetrical switched-capacitor circuit

Abstract

A high step-up dc-dc converter is proposed for photovoltaic power systems in this paper. The proposed converter consists of an input current doubler, a symmetrical switched-capacitor doubler and an active-clamp circuit. The input current doubler minimizes the input current ripple. The symmetrical switched-capacitor doubler is composed of two symmetrical quasi-resonant switched-capacitor circuits, which share the leakage inductance of the transformer as a resonant inductor. The rectifier diodes (switched-capacitor circuit) are turned off at the zero current switching (ZCS) condition, so that the reverse-recovery problem of the diodes is removed. In addition, the symmetrical structure results in an output voltage ripple reduction because the voltage ripples of the charge/pump capacitors cancel each other out. Meanwhile, the voltage stress of the rectifier diodes is clamped at half of the output voltage. In addition, the active-clamp circuit clamps the voltage surges of the switches and recycles the energy of the transformer leakage inductance. Furthermore, pulse-width modulation plus phase angle shift (PPAS) is employed to control the output voltage. The operation principle of the converter is analyzed and experimental results obtained from a 400W prototype are presented to validate the performance of the proposed converter.