A Dual-Switch Coupled Inductor-Based High Step- Up DC-DC Converter for Photovoltaic-Based Renewable Energy Applications

This paper proposes a dual-switch DC-DC converter with high-voltage gain for solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems. High-voltage gain is obtained by combining the coupled inductor (CI) and switched-capacitor (SC) voltage boosting techniques. Combining CI and SC techniques, the design flexibility is increased, and low voltage stresses on the semiconductor devices are achieved, which leads to the adoption of low-voltage-rating semiconductor devices with low ON-state resistance resulting in low switching and conduction losses. Unlike the conventional boost converter, thanks to the existence of leakage inductance, the output diode turns off naturally in the proposed converter, which suppresses the reverse-recovery problem and losses. Operation principle and steady-state analysis are discussed to show the advantages of the proposed DC-DC converter. To verify the operation of the proposed converter, a performance comparison is provided. Moreover, the simulation of a 200 W converter with 20 V input and 400V output is carried out using PLECS Blockset.