Quadrupler DC converter for high intensity discharge lamp applications

The increased demand for efficient lighting applications have led to the emergence of High Intensity discharge lamps. Their major applications are concerned about automotive lighting systems. Added to this they also find application in the field of wide area floodlighting systems, studios and entertainment lighting systems. But the starting stage of these lighting systems require adequate high level voltage which is generally not obtained from batteries or fuel cells that supply them. Hence high step up converters find an indispensable role in ballast of these high intensity discharge lamps. Step up converters boost the voltage of these sources possessing inherent low voltage characteristics. Moreover, efforts are being made to eliminate the drawbacks of these converters to develop a conceptual circuit for high efficiency dc-dc conversion to evolve next generation topologies for renewable energy systems. So a new transformer less voltage boost converter with high voltage transfer gain and reduced semiconductor voltage stress is introduced in this paper. It achieves a much higher voltage gain with reduced component count. The converter features uniform current sharing characteristic of two interleaved phases due to charge balance of blocking capacitors. A closed loop feedback is provided using P-I controller to achieve load voltage regulation. Finally the simulation results are presented to analyze the viability of this scheme in renewable energy applications.