Bidirectional modular multilevel DC-DC converter control and loss modeling for energy extraction from Electro Active Polymer Wave Energy generator

This paper introduces a design, control method and loss model of a bidirectional multilevel dc-dc power converter used for energy harvesting from Electro Active Polymer Wave Energy Converters (EAPWECs), which require high voltage up to 10 kV for operation. To meet all requirements, a modular multilevel dc-dc converter is proposed, which is based on a Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter as main electrical component block. Two different DAB-based converter designs are presented, which are compared in terms of the total wave power output, thereby reflecting the impact of converter efficiency on EAPWEC-based energy harvesting. Further, the modeled power converter efficiencies are compared to experimentally measured efficiencies in order to prove the accuracy of the loss model.