Efficiency-Oriented Parameter Design and Comparison of Medium Voltage Isolated Bidirectional DC/DC Converters

In a medium voltage (MV) solid state transformer(SST), the isolated bidirectional DC/DC converter (IBDC) is the core circuit for controlling power flow and galvanic isolation. Current research works on MV single-cell IBDC mainly focus on two directions: resonant and non-resonant topologies. However, for different scenarios with various voltage regulation ranges and power ranges, which topology should be adopted to achieve better efficiency performance is unclear. To effectively illustrate the two IBDCs’ respective benefits, a comparison between the two IBDCs is conducted in this study along with the optimization design method. For resonant IBDC, a complex objective optimization-based parameter design strategy is developed to realize rapid automatic design under various operating conditions. For non-resonant IBDC, a multi-phase modulation scheme aimed at minimizing the current stress under different voltage and power ranges is introduced. The optimal operating range of the two IBDCs has been derived. A 4 kV/1 kV 200 kW non-resonant IBDC experimental prototype has been built and its efficiency is tested under various operating conditions. The test data were compared with the established power loss model to derive the converter's full range efficiency, and the efficiency of the converter over a wider power range could then be projected.