Abstract
In recent years, to increase the fuel efficiency of environment-friendly vehicles, a large volume of research is ongoing regarding applying photovoltaic (PV) systems. However, in PV systems, a power imbalance between submodules is common due to shading or pollution, and this degrades the power generation efficiency of the system. To solve this problem, various differential power processing (DPP) converters have been developed. In order to adopt the DPP converter to environment-friendly vehicles, the DPP converter must have a small volume, high efficiency, and high price competitiveness. In this regard, we propose a DPP converter with a single multi-winding transformer by integrating multiple transformers and secondary sides of the conventional flyback DPP converter. Since the proposed DPP converter can be applied to battery balancing circuits as well as photovoltaic systems, the proposed circuit is a valuable converter. In the PV system, the maximum output power of each submodule is 60 W, and the total PV system is 240 W by connecting four submodules in series. To verify the validity of the proposed DPP converter, a prototype with 8 V input and 60 W/30 V output specification was built and tested, and the effectiveness of the proposed converter is supported by the experimental results.
Highlights
Conventional differential power processing (DPP) converters are difficult to use in applications that require small volume and high price competitiveness, such as environmentally friendly vehicles
In the proposed DPP converter, the excessive energy induced by high power submodule is stored in the leakage inductor of the integrated transformer, and this energy is transferred to the other submodules through the primary winding and switches
The design specifications of the proposed and conventional flyback DPP converters are represented in Tables 3 and 4
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. To overcome the drawbacks of the PV system, various converters, such as DC optimizer [4,5] and cascaded converters [6,7], have been introduced, which can improve the power generation efficiency and solve the hot spot problem of the PV system Since these converters have to handle the rated power of each submodule or total system, other problems, such as bulky volume of the converter and the loss of the entire system creep in [8]. For small volume and low loss of converters, a differential power processing (DPP) converter that can only handle power differences between the submodules was proposed [9]. Conventional DPP converters are difficult to use in applications that require small volume and high price competitiveness, such as environmentally friendly vehicles To address this issue, the current research aimed to introduce a new DPP converter with a single integrated transformer with PV–IP architecture. The effectiveness of the proposed converter is supported by the experimental results with a 8 V input, 60 W and 30 V output prototype
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
