Fully soft switched high step‐up/down bidirectional buck/boost converter with reduced switch voltage stress

Abstract

AbstractA fully soft switched high step‐up/down bidirectional converter is presented in this paper. The high voltage conversion ratio is achieved by a pair of coupled inductors along with a switched capacitor while all active switches operate at zero voltage switching. To provide soft switching condition for the main switches and absorb the leakage inductance energy of coupled inductors, active clamp circuits are utilized for both operating modes. Furthermore, all active switches body diodes which are utilized as converter diodes turn off at zero current switching (ZCS) and thus, the reverse recovery problem is eradicated. Additionally, the voltage stress of the main switches is reduced in comparison with the basic bidirectional buck/boost converter and thus, their drain‐source resistance is relatively lower which leads to considerably lower conduction loss. All the mentioned advantages along with relatively low number of components contribute to the converter efficiency. Theoretical analysis of the proposed converter is presented in detail for both operating modes and the experimental results from the implementation of a 300 W prototype circuit confirm the validity of the converter performance. A comprehensive comparison table between the proposed converter and the recent counterpart bidirectional converters is presented to demonstrate the converter advantages.