Performance analysis of high gain isolated soft switched DC-DC converter for thermoelectric energy harvesting system using MPPT control strategies

This paper proposes a soft-switched isolated step-up DC-DC converter for thermoelectric energy harvesting application. The soft switching technique such as Zero-Current Switching (ZCS), Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS) schemes together with the accurate MPPT algorithm is adopted for enhancing the overall efficiency of the proposed converter. A ThermoElectric generator (TEG) is used as a DC power source. TEG is a low-voltage and high-current solid-state device, hence a high gain isolated DC-DC boost converter has been used to increase the overall efficiency of the converter. The Low-rated lossless snubber is also used in the proposed converter; hence it is expected to achieve high efficiency for step-up applications. The conversion efficiency obtained is about 92%. Perturb and Observe (P&O), Incremental Conductance (INC) and Modified Incremental Conductance (MINC) tracking techniques are incorporated in this study to track the maximum power from the ThermoElectric source. The proposed converter has been modeled and simulated using PSIM software for investigating their performance effectiveness and the obtained results are presented in this paper.