Bidirectional DC-to-DC converter employing a selective switch and two inductors for optimal operation in buck and boost mode

The conventional bidirectional dc-to-dc converter works on buck or boost mode by using the same inductor. Under the same load capacity, the inductor has an identical optimized inductance value for buck and boost operation. When the load capacity for buck or boost mode is different from each other, it is difficult to design the inductor to satisfy all operating modes with an optimal inductance value. In this case, one mode operates with an optimal inductor, but another is relatively larger or smaller than an optimal one. To solve this problem, we propose a bidirectional dc-to-dc converter, which can select an optimal inductor for buck and boost operation. It consists of adding a selective switch and two inductors to a conventional bidirectional dc-to-dc converter. To verify the validity of the proposed approach, we carry out simulation and experiment based on a prototype.