An alternative to supply DC voltages with high power factor

AC/DC is one of the most common power conversions in power electronics, DC loads should be fed with a stable and a tight regulated voltage. At the same time, the AC/DC converter should comply with low-frequency harmonic regulation. The classical two-stage AC/DC converters achieve these two objectives, although the overall efficiency is low because the power is processed twice. An alternative solution is presented in this paper. It is based on the division of the input power in two parts, one of them processed only once and keeping a unity power factor. This strategy improves the efficiency and reduces the size of the converter without any complex control scheme. This proposal can be implemented with a great variety of well-known topologies. The experimental results show that this solution is a good tradeoff between efficiency and size