High Step-Up Interleaved Converter for Renewable Energy and Automotive Applications

High step-up DC-DC converters are widely used in many industrial appliances and recently introduced in renewable energy systems and automotive applications due to their high voltage gain capability. Nevertheless, current high step-up converters often employ additional circuitry with the purpose of increasing the voltage gain. Consequently, the converter will be bulky, heavy and expensive, because the use of these additional passive and active components influences the power density and the cost of the whole application. Therefore, the well-known techniques of interleaving phases and magnetic coupling are applied in a novel high step-up converter with the purpose of helping tackle these problems. Using these techniques, high voltage gain and reduction of circuit elements can be achieved. In this paper, the operating principle of this converter is summarized and the voltage gain is analyzed. Moreover, the analyzed topology is compared with several outstanding high step-up converters recently proposed that use the concept of interleaving phases and magnetic coupling. Finally, the analyzed converter was experimentally tested and the effectiveness in terms of higher voltage gain and number of components than the current topologies is validated.