Bi-directional DC/DC Converter for Hybrid Vehicles

Hybrid vehicles need a high voltage DC bus to supply power to the motor. Architectures of these vehicles usually include a DC-DC bi-directional converter between this voltage bus and the conventional battery. When the DC bus is held by a big capacitor, the selection and design of the aforementioned converter has an additional difficulty since the converter has to work with an output voltage ranging from 0 to 420 V in steady-state conditions. A bi-directional DC-DC converter for a hybrid vehicle is proposed in this paper. It can be used in the case that a big capacitor holds the voltage in the high side. The application forces three different operation modes being the converter able to operate in those conditions. Experimental results of a 1500 W prototype are included in the paper