Comparative study on paralleled vs. scaled dc-dc converters in high voltage gain applications

Abstract

Today power converters are present in many commercial, medical and industrial applications. A lot of them are high power and high current applications. In order to increase power handling capability several transistors or diodes are paralleled often. However such paralleling may lead to converter's performance degradation or switches quick failure. A parallel modular converter built of many paralleled modules may be an interesting alternative, while a modular converter provides well known advantages like scalability, improved reliability and lower cost. This paper investigates possibility of improving an efficiency by intelligent usage of a modular boost converter in a high voltage gain application.

An extensive review of nonisolated DC-DC boost-based converters

“…Besides, the load power is processed by either one active switch or one diode, as the converter is not adequate for high power levels. For high-power high-current applications, the parallel connection of semiconductors or switching cells is a possible solution, although current sharing is of major concern due to intrinsic differences among the elements [11].…”

Interleaved multi-phase and multi-switch boost converter for fuel cell applications

“…The advantages of module paralleling are well known and include improved dynamic response, expandability, redundancy, power losses distribution, standardization, flexibility, optimization of component utilization and easy maintenance [39]. However, paralleling modules is not exempt of problems and creates new design challenges that include power sharing, stability issues and cost [40].…”

Modified droop controller for paralleling of dc–dc converters in standalone dc system

“…At high powers and to increase the reliability of SSC, parallel combination of dc-dc converters is preferred over single dc-dc converter. Some advantages of paralleling are: (i) increased reliability because of N + 1 formation of converters, (ii) easy expansion of power capacity by adding more parallel units and (iii) reduced manufacturing cost and design efforts because of standardisation of a single unit [5,6]. The requirements for parallel operation of dc-dc converters operating as SSCs are: (i) load current should be shared equally (in per unit) by the converters operating in parallel and (ii) output voltage regulation should be within values acceptable to loads.…”