Topological review of hybrid RES based multi‐port converters

Abstract

Depletion of natural resources like gas, oil, coal along with environment pollution increased the popularity of the Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Power Electronic converters are utilized for conversion of power from RES to coordinate the stand-alone load and utility grid. MPPT control is also established by these converters to supply the standalone or grid-connected load despite of the RES's unpredictable nature. In order to reduce the number of switches used for integrating RES to drive loads, Multi-port converters are developed. These converters have the capability to supply more than one load simultaneously. Furthermore, more number of RESs are connected using these converters in order to drive common loads. Available literatures do not explain in detail regarding various types of multi-output converters, their advantages, disadvantages, application area and control techniques used in order to drive these converters. In this context, a review of recent advances in multi-port DC-DC converters for different application using hybrid RESs is carried out. Initially in literature, few DC-DC converters are connected in parallel, series configuration and used as multi-port converters. Multi-stage conversion is realized using DC-AC-DC conversion. Advantages of conventional converters are integrated in order to develop derived multi-output converters. These multi-port converters have the capability to drive both DC and AC loads from a single DC input source. The converters share common power electronics equipment while generating both DC and AC power simultaneously. Furthermore, these multi-port converters also use single step power conversion process which reduces the overall system loss. As these hybrid multi-port converters use lesser number of power electronic switches, the control complexity of these converters reduces compared to the conventional converters connected in cascaded or parallel manner to drive loads. A detailed review of these multi-port converters with respect to topologies, and operating principle, diverse reliability and effectiveness are presented in this paper. This survey helps designers to select the appropriate RES-based multi-port converters for their respective applications.