A Buck Converter with Integrated Circuit Breaker

Power conversion and protection systems are often associated with two different devices; power electronic converters and circuit breakers. With power electronic converters enabling the integration of various dc sources, and circuit breakers providing system protection, both are essential in the reliability of dc networks. This paper introduces a non-isolated dc-dc power converter with integrated circuit breaker, able to simultaneously provide power conversion, and fault current limiting and interruption capabilities. The proposed system's topology, based on the series coupled inductor Z-Source Circuit Breaker (S-C-ZCB), inherits its automatic ability to limit fault currents and low-pass filter characteristic while reducing its footprint, operational and maintenance cost over traditional dc circuit breakers. Analysis of the proposed system, along with simulation results, are presented and compared during both steady-state operation and a fault on the output terminal.