Single-Phase Bi-directional Ćuk Inverter for Battery Applications

Bidirectional inverters are widely applied in photovoltaic and wind systems that require battery power backup. They are advantageous over unidirectional inverters because of their ability to convert DC power into AC power and then AC power back into DC power to recharge for storage purposes. Generally, bidirectional inverters are designed to have multiple power stages and/or make use of transformers for isolation and voltage/current gain. This usually increases the cost of production and oftentimes reduces the efficiency of the system. At the same time, attempts at eliminating usage of transformers and reduction in the number of power stages limits the range of bidirectional inverters’ capabilities. This is because battery applications today require low voltage DC-AC inverters with AC-DC power flow capability to store energy for later use. As such, only buck-boost based topologies are majorly being proposed and used for this functionality. The buck boost converter is the most widely used in such applications because of its higher efficiency, low component count and simple structure. It has drawbacks, however, such as: pulsating input and output currents - this leads to lower high electromagnetic interference; lower power factor during AC-DC power flow rectification when the batteries are being recharged; and external filter is also required during this power flow to keep the charging voltage constant. This research proposes a bidirectional inverter that attempts to overcome the drawbacks of the widely used buck-boost converter-based topology. The bidirectional inverter proposed in this work is based on a bidirectional Ćuk converter. The Ćuk converter has both continuous input and output currents. A galvanic isolation option on a Ćuk converter is simpler than a buck boost converter - this is important for grid tied systems. The inverter is based on a pseudo DC-link architecture - it uses a front end Ćuk converter cascaded with an unfolding bridge to convert DC power into AC power. The switches in the converter stage are switched at high frequency, while the switches in the unfolding stage are switched slower at the grid frequency. This configuration is desirable over the two-stage topologies because the switching losses in the unfolding bridge are lower because of this low switching frequency used. This configuration also ensures good switch utilization at the unfolding stage by lowering the parasitic effects on the power transfer. The proposed inverter has 4 modes of operation: during modes I and II the power is positive, and it converts DC power into AC power; during modes III and IV the power is negative, and it converts AC power back into DC power. The inverter is designed such that during DC-AC power flow, the input and output inductor currents and coupling capacitor voltage are continuous for improved efficiency. During the AC-DC power flow, the coupling capacitor voltage is discontinuous to achieve a higher input power factor by improving the AC line current, thereby simultaneously increasing the efficiency. The inverter was analysed in terms of: the dead time inserted into the switches to avoid shoot through and shortcircuiting switches; the parasitic effects on the power transfer ratio. Because the Cúk inverter is a high order system, several robust control strategies, such as sliding mode and current control have been proposed. These control methods require complex theory and present practical challenges to be reviewed. As such a new nested loop control strategy was proposed based on the dynamics of the coupling capacitor as the primary energy storage in the Cúk inverter. The control strategy uses 2 loops: an inner current loop and an outer voltage loop. Lead compensators were designed for both the current and voltage loops to achieve good dynamic response at a high bandwidth. Both simulated and experimental results showed that the bidirectional inverter was able to meet the design specifications. The control strategy showed good dynamic response and disturbance rejection under several inverter variations. Although the efficiency during simulations was above 96%, the experimental efficiency dropped significantly because the inverter was built on a Vero board for easy manipulation. The AC input power factor was > 0.95 for both simulated and experimental results

Single stage boost inverter for standalone fuel cell applications

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is a promising technology that can be manufactured in South Africa because of the platinum catalyst required. South Africa is rich in platinum and, therefore, the PEMFC system can be cost-effectively produced. In residential stationary applications of the PEMFC a power conditioning system is required to convert the de voltage output of the PEMFC to ac voltage. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is to analyse, simulate and design a power electronic dc-ac converter. The power electronic dc-ac converter is based on a transformerless single stage power conversion scheme, which has better weight, volume and efficiency than the commonly used two stage power conversion schemes. The selected topology is the boost inverter that consists of two identical boost converters for boosting and inversion of the PEMFC de voltage. Moreover, it achieves reliable operation under nonlinear loads, sudden load changes and inrush current, using a double loop control strategy. Initially, the double loop control strategy was introduced with proportional integral (Pl) controllers. Recently, with the widespread use of proportional resonant PR controllers, the PI controllers were replaced with PR controllers to achieve zero steady state error for the ac components of the reference. However, during the implementation of the PR controllers on the boost inverter, a significant de offset in the output voltage of the boost inverter was observed, which was due to the mismatch of the boost converters' parameters. The de voltage affects pulsating torque AC machines, accuracy in domestic watt-meter and safety of residual current protection. Furthermore, the output voltages of the boost converters showed a clipping effect, which was caused by the dead time of the switching devices used in the boost converters. An integral term was added to the PR controller to form the controller here called the proportional integral resonant (PIR) controller. This controller achieved satisfactory results of de and ac voltage reference following capability and maintains the same advantages of the PI controllers. However, the efficiency was not high due to the high resistance of the inductor used in the boost inverter system

Digital Control of Power Converters and Drives for Hybrid Traction and Wireless Charging

In the last years environmental issues and constant increase of fuel and energy cost have been incentivizing the development of low emission and high efficiency systems, either in traction field or in distributed generation systems from renewable energy sources. In the automotive industry, alternative solutions to the standard internal combustion engine (ICE) adopted in the conventional vehicles have been developed, i.e. fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) or pure electric vehicles (EVs), also referred as battery powered electric vehicles (BEV). Both academic and industry researchers all over the world are still facing several technical development areas concerning HEV components, system topologies, power converters and control strategies. Efficiency, lifetime, stability and volume issues have moved the attention on a number of bidirectional conversion solutions, both for the energy transfer to/from the storage element and to/from the electric machine side. Moreover, along with the fast growing interest in EVs and PHEVs, wireless charging, as a new way of charging batteries, has drawn the attention of researchers, car manufacturers, and customers recently. Compared to conductive power transfer (usually plug-in), wireless power transfer (WPT) is more convenient, weather proof, and electric shock protected. However, there is still more research work needs to be done to optimize efficiency, cost, increase misalignment tolerance, and reduce size of the WPT chargers. The proposed dissertation describes the work from 2012 to 2014, during the PhD course at the Electric Drives Laboratory of the University of Udine and during my six months visiting scholarship at the University of Michigan in Dearborn. The topics studied are related to power conversion and digital control of converters and drives suitable for hybrid/electric traction, generation from renewable energy sources and wireless charging applications. From the theoretical point of view, multilevel and multiphase DC/AC and DC/DC converters are discussed here, focusing on design issues, optimization (especially from the efficiency point-of-view) and advantages. Some novel modulation algorithms for the neutral-point clamped three-level inverter are presented here as well as a new multiphase proposal for a three-level buck converter. In addition, a new active torque damping technique in order to reduce torque oscillations in internal combustion engines is proposed here. Mainly, two practical implementations are considered in this dissertation, i.e. an original two-stage bi-directional converter for mild hybrid traction and a wireless charger for electric vehicles fast charge

Control of power electronic interfaces in distributed generation.

Renewable energy has gained popularity as an alternative resource for electric power generation. As such, Distributed Generation (DG) is expected to open new horizons to electric power generation. Most renewable energy sources cannot be connected to the load directly. Integration of the renewable energy sources with the load has brought new challenges in terms of the system’s stability, voltage regulation and power quality issues. For example, the output power, voltage and frequency of an example wind turbine depend on the wind speed, which fluctuate over time and cannot be forecasted accurately. At the same time, the nonlinearity of residential electrical load is steadily increasing with the growing use of devices with rectifiers at their front end. This nonlinearity of the load deviates both current and voltage waveforms in the distribution feeder from their sinusoidal shape, hence increasing the Total Harmonics Distortions (THD) and polluting the grid. Advances in Power Electronic Interfaces (PEI) have increased the viability of DG systems and enhanced controllability and power transfer capability. Power electronic converter as an interface between energy sources and the grid/load has a higher degree of controllability compared to electrical machine used as the generator. This controllability can be used to not only overcome the aforementioned shortfalls of integration of renewable energy with the grid/load but also to reduce THD and improve the power quality. As a consequence, design of a sophisticated controller that can take advantage of this controllability provided by PEIs to facilitate the integration of DG with the load and generate high quality power has become of great interest. In this study a set of nonlinear controllers and observers are proposed for the control of PEIs with different DG technologies. Lyapunov stability analysis, simulation and experimental results are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control solution in terms of tracking objective and meeting the THD requirements of IEEE 519 and EN 50160 standards for US and European power systems, respectively

Design of a 350 kW DC/DC Converter in 1200-V SiC Module Technology for Automotive Component Testing

In this paper, the design and implementation of a DC/DC converter for automotive component testing with state-of-the art performance is described. The converter is the core of a battery emulator for the characterization and development of automotive batteries, electronic chargers, traction inverters, DC-DC converters, E-motors and E-axles. Cutting edge performance, flexibility and compactness are obtained by exploiting 1200-V SiC modules, high switching frequency, planar transformer technology, suitable topology solutions and fast digital control strategies. The implemented system is a liquid-cooled, bidirectional converter with galvanic isolation capable of 350 kW continuous output power, output voltage range 48-1000 V, continuous output current up to 800 A (1600 A peak), voltage/current ramp-up time below 10/2 ms and 0.1% current/voltage accuracy. The entire instrument is implemented in a standard full-height 19-inch rack cabinet