96.48% Peak-Efficiency Continuous-Current Step-Up Battery Charger (CC-SUBC) with Dual Energy-Harvesting Sources for Automotive Application

This paper proposes a continuous-current step-up battery charger (CC-SUBC) for electronic or hybrid vehicles. The proposed charger can simultaneously extract power from dual energy harvesting sources ($\mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{P}\mathrm{V}}$ and $\mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{T}\mathrm{E}\mathrm{G}}$), of which voltages are lower than the output battery voltage ($\mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{A}\mathrm{T}}$). In addition, the CC-SUBC charges the battery with a continuous output current ($\mathrm{I}_{\mathrm{O}}$) although it operates as a step-up converter. Peak efficiency was obtained as 96.48%, which is not only the highest peak efficiency but also the largest maximum output power among the state-of-the-art step-up converters.