Comparative study on paralleled vs. scaled Dc-dc converters in high voltage gain applications

Abstract

Today power converters are present in many commercial, medical and industrial applications. A lot of them are high power and high current applications. In order to increase power handling capability several transistors or diodes are paralleled often. However such paralleling may lead to converter's performance degradation or switches quick failure. A parallel modular converter built of many paralleled modules may be an interesting alternative, while a modular converter provides well known advantages like scalability, improved reliability and lower cost. This paper investigates possibility of improving an efficiency by intelligent usage of a modular boost converter in a high voltage gain application. © 2008 IEEE.