Zero-voltage and Zero-current Switched Fuel-cell Powered DC-to-DC Converter

Abstract

This paper presents a novel efficient fuel-cell powered converter. The power converter requires a special circuit configuration and control techniques to compensate the wide voltage variation because the output of fuel-cell has broad voltage ranges. So the proposed converter integrates a buck converter with a push-pull converter to be suitable for the fuel-cell as an input source. In addition, to increase the system efficiency each converter employs an auxiliary circuit for zero-voltage and zero-current switching. Operational principle is given in detail. The validity of the proposed fuel-cell powered converter is verified by experiments based on a 1 [kW] grid-connected prototype.