| Abstract |
In the field of electrical solar power conversion
efficiency is the most important topic. In most applications a
special DC-to-DC converter is necessary to couple the solar
cells, operating at low DC-voltages, to the inverter’s DClink.
These converters with rather low input respectively
high output voltage ratings have, due to the high current
ratings, a relatively low efficiency. Therefore, a special
design is required to adapt the different voltage levels and
fulfill the requirements of loss reduction. In this paper, a
possible solution for such a specific solar converter is
presented: a DC-to-DC converter with a controlled active
snubber circuit. The input voltage of a (e.g. battery
buffered) solar array (12 V or 24 V) is adapted to a 400 V
DC-link, for a local grid power inverter supply. The total
power to be managed on the output of the DC-to-DC
converter is 500 W (12 V) respectively 1 kW (24 V) in our
case. So it makes sense to develop a topology which is also
well suited for paralleling several power switches. The
structure presented here fulfills all of these topics. |
