Hardware configuration of DC-DC converter for renewable energies conversion

A DC/DC converter that can be used to charge a lead-acid battery bank from a wide variety of input renewable sources is presented. The motherboard of the converter can be populated in such way that a boost or a SEPIC (Single-Ended Primary-Inductor Converter) structure is obtained. In order to lower the stress on the electronic components, the converter uses four DC/DC stages connected in parallel and driven with interleaved PWM signals. The main advantage resides in the fact that all parameters of the control loops as well as the nominal values for input and output electrical values can be adjusted by the final user. Two converters were built and tested simultaneously inside a low power distributed system, implementing MPPT algorithm. Key aspects of the low level hardware implementation and component dimensioning will be detailed.