Review and Selection of Bidirectional DC-DC Power Converter for Green Energy Systems

Inhalt:
Green energy generators are becoming increasingly popular worldwide with the push to reduce dependency on conventional carbon-emitting fuels. These green energy generators (GEG) for home use or small business applications include photovoltaic (PV), batteries, electric vehicles, and hydrogen-based systems. For climatic regions where PV is unavailable throughout the year, a mix of GEG solutions is recommended to ensure 100% autonomy from the electric grid in operation. Electronic power converters act like an interface to perform a bidirectional power flow between the source and sink connecting GEG, loads and the electric grid. However, each type of GEG has different voltage and current requirements, which are challenging to meet by a single converter. The recent development in the usage of wide band gap devices has opened the possibility of designing a single converter that can perform multi-port operations connecting different sources and sinks via a common bus bar at the input and/or output. This work aims to present a review and selection of a bidirectional DC-DC power converter to connect multiple GEGs for a single business or home unit. The uniqueness in selection and design of the power converter is the target high power density and economically feasible design, which will be achieved with the use of GaN power semiconductor devices. The manuscript will be useful for industry targeting to increase the power density by using wide band gap devices.