Efficient interleaved high step-up converter with wide load range soft switching operation

The output voltage of the renewable energy resources such as photovoltaic and fuel cell systems is relatively low. Therefore, in the renewable energy-based power generation systems, high step-up (HSU) DC-DC converters are demanded between the renewable energy resource and the grid. The required characteristics of such HSU converters are low size, cost, number of elements, current ripple, and high efficiency. In response, in this paper, a new non-isolated HSU converter with interleaved structure and resonant operation is presented. The proposed converter achieves high voltage gain and full soft switching performance over a wide range of load variations while utilizing low number of components. In this converter, the voltage gain is adjusted by tuning the coupled inductors turns ratio and the resonant frequency. The semiconductors voltage stress is low in comparison to the other counterpart converters with resonant operation. Also, the converter uses interleaving technique to reduce the input current ripple. Comprehensive theoretical analysis of the converter is presented and its performance is compared with the recent counterparts. In order to validate the converter effectiveness, a laboratory prototype is implemented and the experimental results are provided.