High power density DC-DC converter for home energy management systems

Environmental issues related to global warming and resources dryness, increase the global concern for reducing the energy consumption using high efficiency and high power density systems. Therefore, home energy management systems (HEMS) deal with these problems by monitoring and controlling the power consumption of home electronics. However, expanding of human living space increases intense requirements to downsize electronic systems. In order to enhance HEMS and optimize the household living space, this paper shows the design and power loss analysis of a high power density DC-DC converter capable to achieve high efficiency with low weight and low volume components. This converter, developed for home electronics and electric vehicles, uses a novel magnetic coupling technique capable to reduce the size of magnetic components and of the converter itself. As a result, a 1 kW interleaved boost converter with integrated winding coupled inductors (IWCI) was designed and experimentally validated obtaining a volumetric power density of 145 cc/kW.