Design and Development of a Versatile Interleaved Boost Converter for PV Applications

In this paper, a two-phase interleaved boost converter (IBC) is developed, designed, and practically implemented. The novelty of the proposed work is its versatility to operate as a classical boost converter (CBC) and seamlessly switch to an IBC. Both the converter configurations have been designed and implemented on a single printed circuit board (PCB). Resultantly, from a practical perspective, the same PCB is employed for interfacing the photovoltaic (PV) panel input with the load. In other words, depending on the voltage gain and load power requirement, the proposed versatile PCB and the control algorithm is configured to operate in one of the three modes: (i) CBC alone works, (ii) IBC alone works, and (iii) switch over from CBC to IBC and vice versa. To validate the versatility, a prototype converter is built and experimentally tested. Practically, when 24 V DC is applied at the input, 96 V is obtained at the output terminals when the converter operates as a 2 -phase IBC with a duty ratio of 0.5. The same converter yields an output voltage of 48 V when the CBC mode is enabled. The detailed operating principle, design equations, and the experimental results are presented for recognizing the superior features of the proposed work which can also be used as a teaching aid.