Multiblock Soft-Switched Bidirectional AC–AC Converter Using a Single Loss-Less Active Snubber Block

Author

Safaee, Alireza ; Yazdani, Davood ; Bakhshai, Alireza ; Jain, Praveen K.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Queen´´s Univ., Kingston, ON, Canada

Volume

27

Issue

5

fYear

2012

fDate

5/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

2260

Lastpage

2272

Abstract

A multiblock soft-switched bidirectional ac-ac converter using an active snubber is proposed in this paper. The snubber provides zero-voltage switching (ZVS) for the main switches of the entire power converter blocks in the entire input voltages and polarities. To achieve ZVS operation, the snubber block extracts the energy of the main switch drain-source capacitors and delivers it to the high-voltage side. Moreover, the snubber switches have zero-current switching (ZCS) turn-on and ZVS turn-off transitions. The performance of the proposed converter system is evaluated on a prototype including two converter blocks of 500 W working at 150 kHz with an input-voltage range of 110 V (-30% to +20%) and output of 175 V. Experimental results confirm that the proposed snubber improves the efficiency by 3% (4%) at half (full) load power for the entire input-voltage range.

Keywords

AC-AC power convertors; snubbers; zero current switching; zero voltage switching; ZCS; ZVS; frequency 150 kHz; input voltage range; multiblock soft switched bidirectional ac-ac converter; power 500 W; power converter blocks; single loss less active snubber block; snubber switches; voltage 110 V; voltage 175 V; zero current switching; zero voltage switching; Capacitors; Inductors; Snubbers; Switches; Switching frequency; Switching loss; Zero voltage switching; AC–AC converter; bidirectional converter; soft-switching techniques;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8993

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPEL.2011.2172959

Filename

6056569