A Differential Power Processing Converter Adopting Active Clamp Structure and Integrated Planar Transformer

Several studies are ongoing to apply photovoltaic (PV) systems to improve the fuel efficiency of electric vehicles. However, due to shading, pollution, and malfunction of PV submodule, a power imbalance between PV submodules occurs, resulting in the degraded power generation efficiency of the entire PV system. Although the differential power processing (DPP) converters were developed to solve this problem, the conventional DPP converters have problems of large volume and low-price competitiveness caused by lots of components. Accordingly, in order to use the DPP converter in electric vehicles, it is necessary to reduce volume, and achieve high efficiency and high price competitiveness. This paper proposes a DPP converter with an active clamp and single multi-winding plane transformer. The proposed DPP converter showed reduced volume, improved price competitiveness, and high efficiency.