• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.161-167
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• 2018

In battery-operated systems, an isolated converter is used to interface the utility grid with the system to increase stability when charging and discharging batteries. Systems such as vehicle-to-grids (V2Gs), on-board chargers, and energy storage systems (ESSs) have recently become popular, and the roles of isolated converters have become important considerations in fabricating such devices. A fixed-frequency LLC converter, which is a type of isolated converter, presents the advantages of high efficiency and high power density by performing zero-voltage switching (ZVS) over wide frequency ranges. However, the magnetizing inductance of the LLC converter should be designed to enable ZVS in all switching devices. Therefore, in this study, the operating characteristics of the LLC circuit are analyzed, and an optimal design method for ZVS operation is established. Moreover, an 8 kW LLC high-efficiency and high-power-density resonant converter is designed and tested for ESS application. The LLC converter achieves 98% efficiency at rated power.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.120-127
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• 2011

Solar array has the following nonlinear characteristic, such as whose output current increases, output voltage is reduced. For this reason, boost converter with solar array system is always controlled to remain on the maximum power point of the solar array. In this case, we are not focused on the output of the solar array and not consider efficiency of the boost converter, which is assumed reliable. But efficiency of the converter also should be considered, which affects the total efficiency of the overall solar energy system. In this paper, efficiency calculation of the boost converter using power balance method is proposed, which will be used for a powerful reference before hardware realization.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.975-984
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• 2018

This work presents a high efficiency phase shifted full bridge (PSFB) DC-DC converter for use in the second stage of a battery charger for neighborhood electrical vehicle (EV) applications. In the design of the converter, Lithium-ion battery cells are preferred due to their high voltage and current rates, which provide a high power density. This requires wide range output voltage regulation for PSFB converter operation. In addition, the battery charger works with a light load when the battery charge voltage reaches its maximum value. The soft switching of the PSFB converter depends on the dead time optimization and load condition. As a result, the converter has to work with soft switching at a wide range output voltage and under light conditions to reach high efficiency. The operation principles of the PSFB converter for the continuous current mode (CCM) and the discontinuous current mode (DCM) are defined. The performance of the PSFB converter is analyzed in detail based on wide range output voltage and load conditions in terms of high efficiency. In order to validate performance analysis, a prototype is built with 42-54 V / 15 A output values at a 200 kHz switching frequency. The measured maximum efficiency values are obtained as 94.4% and 76.6% at full and at 2% load conditions, respectively.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.417-422
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• 2008

In this paper, a novel DC/DC low-voltage high-current converter circuit is proposed to improve the efficiency of power converter used in the grid-connected fuel-cell generator system. We proposed a novel high efficiency grid-connected power conditioning system for RPG fuel cell. On the result of that, the loss of system was decreased rapidly by driving stack within the condition of maximum efficiency. The peak currents of the current-type inductor and the transformer's coil are reduced by synchronizing switching frequency of Buck-type converter is increased twice as the Push-Pull converter's switching frequency. The novel structure of DC/DC converter is able to realize ZVS-ZCS in fuel-cell system is proposed. The proposed switching component of Push-Pull converter has the ZVS and ZCS function by using the circuit of new passive clamp.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.285-293
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• 2021

An optimal operation method based on weighted efficiency for a two-stage boost converter is proposed in this study. Detailed loss analysis of the converter is performed to derive the optimal operation method according to the load and input voltage fluctuations, and the optimal DC-bus voltage is derived by applying the weighted efficiency method. The proposed method can satisfy optimal efficiency in the main operation region without a complicated control method. Using 1kW typical two-stage boost converter and is verified three types of weighted efficiency formulas and loss analysis are utilized to derive high-efficiency optimal DC-bus voltage from each load range.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.188-193
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• 2011

A highly efficient AC-DC converter for small wind power generation systems using a brushless DC generator (BLDCG) is presented in this paper. The market standard AC-DC converter for a BLDCG consists of a three-phase diode rectifier and a boost DC-DC converter, which has an IGBT and a fast recovery diode (FRD). This kind of two-stage solution basically suffers from a large amount of conduction loss and the efficiency greatly decreases under a light load, or at a low current, because of the switching devices with a P-N junction. In order to overcome this low efficiency, especially at a low current, a three-phase bridgcless converter consisting of three upper side FRDs and three lower side Super Junction FETs is presented. In the overall operating speed region, including the cut-in speed, the efficiency of the proposed converter is improved by up to 99%. Such a remarkable result is validated and compared with conventional solutions by calculating the power loss based on I-V curves and the switching loss data of the adopted commercial switches and the current waveforms obtained through PSIM simulations.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.549-556
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• 2014

This paper proposes a highly power-efficient single-inductor multiple-outputs (SIMO) DC-DC converter with a gate charge sharing method in which gate charges of output switches are shared to improve the power efficiency and to reduce the switching power loss. The proposed converter was fabricated by using a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process technology with high voltage devices of 5 V. The input voltage range of the converter is from 2.8 V to 4.2 V, which is based on a single cell lithium-ion battery, and the output voltages are 1.0 V, 1.2 V, 1.8 V, 2.5 V, and 3.3 V. Using the proposed gate charge sharing method, the maximum power efficiency is measured to be 87.2% at the total output current of 450 mA. The measured power efficiency improved by 2.1% compared with that of the SIMO DC-DC converter without the proposed gate charge sharing method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.271-278
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• 2006

A new high efficiency zero-voltage and zero-current switching (ZVZCS) bidirectional DC/DC converter is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter consists of two symmetric half-bridge cells as the input and output stages. MOSFETs of input stage are turned-on in ZVS condition, and those of output stage are turned-off in ZCS condition. In addition, MOSFETs of input and output stages have low voltage stresses clamped to input and output voltage, respectively. Therefore, the proposed converter has high efficiency and high power density. The operational principles are analyzed and the advantages of the proposed converter are described. The 300W prototype of the proposed converter is implemented for 42V hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) application in order to verify the operational principles and advantages.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.561-567
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• 2011

This paper presents a high-efficiency power conditioning system (PCS) for grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) modules. The proposed PCS consists of a step-up DC-DC converter and a single-phase DC-AC inverter for the grid-connected PV modules. A soft-switching step-up DC-DC converter is proposed to generate a high DC-link voltage from the low PV module voltage with a high-efficiency. A DC-link voltage controller is presented for constant DC-link voltage regulation. A half-bridge inverter is used for the single-phase DC-AC inverter for grid connection. A grid current controller is suggested to supply PV electrical power to the power grid with a unity power factor. Experimental results are obtained from a 180 W grid-connected PV module system using the proposed PCS. The proposed PCS achieves a high power efficiency of 93.0 % with an unity power factor for a 60 Hz / 120 Vrms AC power grid.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.708-712
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• 2001

A new phase-shifted parallel-input/series-output (PI SO) dual inductor-fed push-pull converter for high-power step­up applications is proposed. This converter is operated at a constant duty cycle and employs an auxiliary circuit to control the output voltage with a phase-shift between the two modules. It features a voltage conversion characteristic which is linear to changes in the control input, and high step-up ratio with a greatly reduced switch turn-off stress resulting in a significant increase in the converter efficiency. It also shows a low ripple content and low root-mean-square (RMS) current in the output capacitor. The operational principle is analyzed and a comparative analysis with the conventional pulse-width-modulated (PWM) PISO dual inductor-fed push-pull converter is presented. A 50kHz, 800W, 350Vdc prototype with an input of 20-32Vdc has also been constructed to validate the proposed converter. The proposed converter compares favorably with the conventional counterpart and is considered well suited to high-power step-up applications.