Skip to main content
Log in

Unified power flow analysis of string current diverters

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Electrical Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, a unified power flow analysis is proposed for current diverters which are used for balancing series-stacked voltage domains, e.g. employed in photovoltaic (PV) energy systems or auxiliary power supplies with very high DC input voltage. This analysis allows to easily derive the power levels processed by the current diverters for any given operating point of the attached sources and/or loads representing the voltage domains. The proposed analysis is applied to two examples; on the one hand, PV systems are investigated where it is revealed that power-limited current diverters can only offer a benefit for light shading scenarios; on the other hand, auxiliary power supplies with extremely high-voltage conversion ratios are investigated.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Kolar JW, Krismer F, Lobsiger Y, Muehlethaler J, Nussbaumer T, Miniboeck J (2012) Extreme efficiency power electronics. In: Proceedings of the 7th international conference of integrated power electronics systems (CIPS), pp 1–22

  2. Lee Y-S, Cheng M-W (2005) Intelligent control battery equalization for series connected lithium-ion battery strings. IEEE Trans Ind Electron 52(5):1297–1307

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kutkut NH (1998) A modular nondissipative current diverter for EV battery charge equalization. In: Proceedings of the 13th IEEE applied power electronics conference (APEC), vol 2, pp 686–690

  4. McClurg J, Pilawa-Podgurski RCN, Shenoy PS (2014) A series-stacked architecture for high-efficiency data center power delivery. In: Proceedings of the IEEE energy conversion congress and exposition (ECCE USA), pp 170–177, Sep

  5. Steinke GK, Rufer A (2015) Use of a DC–DC step up converter in photovoltaic plants for increased electrical energy production and better utilization of covered surface area. In: Proceedings of the international conference on power electronics, intelligent motion, renewable energy and energy management (PCIM Europe), pp 1648–1655, May

  6. Rufer A (2015) A five-level NPC photovoltaic inverter with an actively balanced capacitive voltage divider. In: Proceedings of the international conference on power electronics, intelligent motion, renewable energy and energy management (PCIM Europe), pp 172–179, May

  7. Rufer A, Barrade P, Steinke G (2014) Voltage step-up converter based on multistage stacked boost architecture (MSBA). In: Proceedings of the international power electronics conference (IPEC-ECCE Asia), pp 1081–1086, May

  8. Shenoy PS, Krein PT (2013) Differential power processing for DC systems. IEEE Trans Power Electron 28(4):1795–1806

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bergveld HJ, Buethker D, Castello C, Doorn T, de Jong A, van Otten R, de Waal K (2013) Module-level DC/DC conversion for photovoltaic systems: the delta-conversion concept. IEEE Trans Power Electron 28(4):2005–2013

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Qin S, Barth CB, Pilawa-Podgurski RCN (2016) Enhancing microinverter energy capture with submodule differential power processing. IEEE Trans Power Electron 31(5):3575–3585

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Olalla C, Deline C, Clement D, Levron Y, Rodriguez M, Maksimovic D (2015) Performance of power-limited differential power processing architectures in mismatched PV systems. IEEE Trans Power Electron 30(2):618–631

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Shenoy PS, Kim KA, Johnson BB, Krein PT (2013) Differential power processing for increased energy production and reliability of photovoltaic systems. IEEE Trans Power Electron 28(6):2968–2979

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Stauth JT, Seeman MD, Kesarwani K (2013) Resonant switched-capacitor converters for sub-module distributed photovoltaic power management. IEEE Trans Power Electron 28(3):1189–1198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kasper M, Bortis D, Kolar JW (2013) Novel high voltage conversion ratio ”Rainstick” DC/DC converters. In: Proceedings of the IEEE energy conversion congress and exposition (ECCE USA), pp 789–796

  15. Kasper M, Herden S, Bortis D, Kolar JW (2014) Impact of PV string shading conditions on panel voltage equalizing converters and optimization of a single converter system with overcurrent protection. In: Proceedings of the 16th European conference on power electronics and applications (EPE-ECCE Europe), pp 1–10

  16. Kim KA, Shenoy PS, Krein PT (2015) Converter rating analysis for photovoltaic differential power processing systems. IEEE Trans Power Electron 30(4):1987–1997

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Kasper M, Bortis D, Kolar JW (2014) Classification and comparative evaluation of PV panel-integrated DC–DC converter concepts. IEEE Trans Power Electron 29(5):2511–2526

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Walker GR, Pierce JC (2006) Photovoltaic DC–DC module integrated converter for novel cascaded and bypass grid connection topologies—design and optimisation. In: Proceedings of the 37th IEEE power electronics specialists conference (PESC), pp 1–7

  19. Huber J, Ortiz G, Krismer F, Widmer N, Kolar JW (2013) \(\eta \)\(\rho \) pareto optimization of bidirectional half-cycle discontinuous-conduction-mode series-resonant DC/DC converter with fixed voltage transfer ratio. In: Proceedings of the 28th IEEE applied power electronics conference and exposition (APEC), pp 1413–1420

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthias Kasper.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kasper, M., Bortis, D. & Kolar, J.W. Unified power flow analysis of string current diverters. Electr Eng 100, 2085–2094 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00202-018-0682-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00202-018-0682-z

Keywords

Navigation