ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF A ZERO VOLTAGE TRANSITION DC-DC BOOST CONVERTER FOR PHOTOVOLTAIC (PV) ENERGY SYSTEM

Abstract

India despite being world’s third largest power and energy producer and consumer is considered to have and extremely undependable and fickle electrical infrastructure. It is believed that around 27% of the energy that is generated is either stolen or lost in transmission. When the 2012 grid failure happened, nothing happened to the villages that were not connected to the grid. Some instances include, Meerwada located in Madhya Pradesh because it has a 14KW solar power station.The reason why photovoltaic(PV) energy systems are gaining popularity is because of the systems that are being created and updated to obscure as much energy as it can from the sun that too in the most efficient way and contribute in humungous capacity without really affecting their performance. This thesis talks about the study of boost convertor operating all the switching devices under Zero Voltage Transmission and also a model convertor that can supply a load of 250W that is designed and is also used in a PV energy system. In this methodology, a part of the circuit resonates for a small portion of the switching cycle of the convertor, called as the auxiliary circuit that improves and betters the soft transition or change from ON to OFF state and vice versa, hence improving the convertor efficiency by reducing and lessening the dominating portion in losses i.e. the losses that happen because of difficult transition of the switches. Because of the lesser amount of losses during switching transitions, the heating effect of MOSFETs is also reduced and they have a more durable life. The relative and qualified study between this new methodology and traditional hard switching convertor is studied and analyzed with respect to improvement in efficiency and reduction in switching losses.