High Efficiency High Power Density Multi-level PFC Converter

Project Type: ARÇELİK

Project Duration: 33 months

Brief Summary

Power factor correction (PFC) is a term given to a technology that has been used since the turn of the 20th century to restore the power factor to as close to unity as is economically viable. Conventional methods for this purpose include adding capacitors to the electrical grid which compensate for the reactive power demand of the inductive load and thus reduce the burden on the supply. But the problem of passive PFC methods is that they require line frequency filters which are bulky and heavy. By improvement in the semiconductor technology, power electronics-based solutions have emerged in the past few decades which effectively follow the PFC aim which is regulating the output voltage and input current shaping.

In the past few years, research efforts have focused on single-stage multilevel topologies as a low-cost AC-DC stage for AC-DC power supply. Multi-level converters produce more voltage levels decreasing the voltage and current harmonics significantly while operating at lower switching frequency.

In this project we are planning to design and build multi-level PFC power converter which have following ratings;

3.7 kW power rating
Si-based high efficiency (>99%)
high power density (>85 W/in3)
bi-directional power flow capability for various applications such as electric vehicle (EV) battery charger and DC home applications.