In this paper, a modular interleaved boost converter is first proposed by integrating a forward energy-delivering circuit with a voltage-doubler to achieve high step-up ratio and high efficiency for dc-microgrid applications. Then, steady-state analyses are made to show the merits of the proposed converter module. For closed-loop control design, the corresponding small-signal model is also derived. It is seen that, for higher power applications, more modules can be paralleled to increase the power rating and the dynamic performance. As an illustration, closed-loop control of a 450-W rating converter consisting of two paralleled modules with 24-V input and 200-V output is implemented for demonstration. Experimental results show that the modular high step-up boost converter can achieve an efficiency of 95.8% approximately.

In this paper, a novel high step-up converter is proposed for fuel-cell system applications. As an illustration, a two-phase version configuration is given for demonstration. First, an interleaved structure is adapted for reducing input and output ripples. Then, a C¿uk-type converter is integrated to the first phase to achieve a much higher voltage conversion ratio and avoid operating at extreme duty ratio. In addition, additional capacitors are added as voltage dividers for the two phases for reducing the voltage stress of active switches and diodes, which enables one to adopt lower voltage rating devices to further reduce both switching and conduction losses. Furthermore, the corresponding model is also derived, and analysis of the steady-state characteristic is made to show the merits of the proposed converter. Finally, a 200-W rating prototype system is also constructed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed converter. It is seen that an efficiency of 93.3% can be achieved when the output power is 150-W and the output voltage is 200-V with 0.56 duty ratio.

Electricity plays a crucial role in the well-being of humans and is a determining factor of the economic development of a country. Electricity issues have encouraged researchers to focus on improving power availability and quality along with reliability. This pursuit has increasingly raised the intention to integrate renewable energy (RE) into power systems to curb the problem of energy deficiency. However, intermittency in the sources of RE supply coupled with fluctuating changes in demand with respect to time has induced high risk in maintaining system reliability in terms of providing adequate supply to consumers. Whilst an energy storage system (ESS) is not another source of electricity, it is proven to be effective and viable in solving the aforementioned issues. Thus, this paper comprehensively reviews the development of ESS technologies and discusses the benefits and real-life applications of these technologies. The concept of reliability in power systems is also explored to provide an improved understanding of this study. Lastly, notable studies that have addressed the reliability impact of ESSs on power systems are discussed. This review paper therefore is expected to provide a critical analysis of ESS developments, as well as recognize their research gaps in terms of reliability studies in modern RE-integrated power networks.

This study develops a newly designed, patented, bidirectional dc/dc converter (BDC) that interfaces a main energy storage (ES1), an auxiliary energy storage (ES2), and dc-bus of different voltage levels, for application in hybrid electric vehicle systems. The proposed converter can operate in a step-up mode (i.e., low-voltage dual-source-powering mode) and a step-down (i.e., high-voltage dc-link energy-regenerating mode), both with bidirectional power flow control. In addition, the model can independently control power flow between any two low-voltage sources (i.e., low-voltage dual-source buck/boost mode). Herein, the circuit configuration, operation, steady-state analysis, and closed-loop control of the proposed BDC are discussed according to its three modes of power transfer. Moreover, the simulation and experimental results for a 1 kW prototype system are provided to validate the proposed converter.

In the microgrid system, the distributed energy resource (DER)-based single-phase inverter is usually adopted. In order to reduce conversion losses, the key is to save costs and size by removing any kind of transformer as well as reducing the power devices. The objective of this letter is to study a novel five-level multistring inverter topology for DERs-based dc/ac conversion system. In this study, a high step-up converter is introduced as a front-end stage to improve the conversion efficiency of conventional boost converters and to stabilize the output dc voltage of various DERs such as photovoltaic and fuel cell modules for use with the simplified multilevel inverter. The simplified multilevel inverter requires only six active switches instead of the eight required in the conventional cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter. In addition, two active switches are operated at the line frequency. The studied multistring inverter topology offers strong advantages such as improved output waveforms, smaller filter size, and lower electromagnetic interference and total harmonics distortion. Simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.