Performance analysis of high efficient fourth-order quadratic buck-boost converter for PV applications

Solar energy is the solar radiation from the sun capable of producing heat, causing chemical reactions, or generating electricity. A solar system always needs a converter. The converter that steps up and steps down the voltage and offers a more efficient solution using a minimal number of components is called a Buck-boost converter. Reduced redundant power processing, which is a concept that aims to improve the efficiency of power converters by reducing the amount of power that is processed by more than one converter. A pair of basic converters connected in series or parallel but not in cascade is called a non-cascading connection. There are only two switches that operate at a high switching frequency, switching losses are kept to a minimum. The concept behind them is less redundant power processing, which states that when a non-cascading connection is utilized, there is less power transfer between the input and output ports. The proposed converter uses I-IIA non-cascading structures, which are a kind of switching converters that depends simultaneously on the duty ratio and has a high step-up voltage conversion ratio. The converter is capable of producing quadratic voltage gain for both step-up and step-down stages, ensuring the wide conversion range. With just four energy elements (two inductors, two capacitors) the proposed converter has input continuous current, non-inverting voltage with common ground and is capable of producing high efficiencies. To test its performance and competitiveness of the proposed converter, a 200W model is developed in the MATLAB/Simulink and compared with the similar recent converters.