High Gain DC-DC Converter for Three-Wheeler Electric Vehicles

There is an ongoing increase in development of lightweight electric vehicles. In developing countries, electric three-wheelers in use are mostly limited to low voltage drive systems. They are powered directly from the limited battery voltage without any step-up conversion before connection to the motor controller. Due to low voltage and low power DC motor drives, speed and torque characteristics of the vehicle suffers when compared to other EVs with similar battery storage capacity. This paper presents a novel power electronic drive system of step-up DC-DC converter composed of cascaded boost and SC-Zeta topology, capable of voltage gain as high as 40 times at a duty cycle of 0.8. The boosted output voltage is given to a three phase inverter for control of traction motors up to 4 KW of power which will enable existing three-wheelers to use high performance drive system. The proposed converter is simulated & compared with other existing high gain converters in literature, and the output results are presented graphically.