Comparing the Efficiency of Cascode GaN and Enhancement GaN in Boost Converter of PV System

In photovoltaic (PV) systems, the environmental factors change the instantaneous electrical power available from the PV panel. A maximum power point tracking (MPTT) algorithm can be implemented to search the maximum power point on the voltage-current characteristic of the PV panel. Power electronic converters are used to transfer this maximum power from the panel to the load with the maximum efficiency as much as possible. The DC-DC boost converter can be controlled by the output of the MPPT algorithm that provides the reference for the input voltage, inductance current or duty cycle of the boost converter. The efficiency of the converter can be increased by using wide-bandgap devices. The purpose of this research is to compare the losses of the cascode GaN high electron mobility (HEMT) and enhancement GaN used in the DC-DC boost converter fed from the PV simulator. In this paper, the results of PSPICE model are compared to the results of experimental work for the cascode GaN high electron mobility (HEMT). The simulations are performed by MATLAB and SPICE co-simulation.