Single switch converter with high voltage gain and low voltage stress for photovoltaic applications

This paper presents a novel single-switch converter with high voltage gain and low voltage stress for photovoltaic applications. The proposed converter is composed of coupled-inductor and switched-capacitor techniques to achieve high step-up conversion ratio without adopting extremely high duty ratio or high turns ratio. The capacitors are charged in parallel and discharged in series by the coupled inductor to achieve high step-up voltage gain with an appropriate duty ratio. Besides, the voltage stress on the main switch is reduced with a passive clamp circuit, and the conduction losses are reduced. In addition, the reverse-recovery problem of the diode is alleviated by a coupled inductor. Thus, the efficiency can be further improved. The operating principle, steady state analysis and design of the proposed single switch converter with high step-up gain is carried out. A 24 V input voltage, 400 V output, and 300W maximum output power integrated converter is designed and analysed using MATLAB simulink. Simulation result proves the performance and functionality of the proposed single switch DC-DC converter for validation.