A 150-kW 99% Efficient All Silicon Carbide Triple-Active-Bridge Converter for Solar-Plus-Storage Systems

WU, YUHENG; MAHMUD, MOHAMMAD HAZZAZ; CHRISTIAN, SHAMAR; FANTINO, ROBERTO ARMIN; GOMEZ, RODERICK AMIR; ZHAO, YUE; BALDA, JUAN CARLOS

IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

Año: 2022 vol. 10 p. 3496 - 3510

2168-6777

Solar-plus-storage systems could effectively mitigate uncertainties of the photovoltaic (PV) generation and improve system reliability by adding an integrated battery energy storage system. As a three-port bidirectional isolated dc-dc converter with soft-switching capability, the triple-active-bridge (TAB) converter inherently match the requirements of the solar-plus-storage system. However, challenges still remain in the TAB converter design to further improve the system efficiency. In this paper, the detailed design, implementation, and demonstration for a silicon carbide (SiC) 150-kW TAB converter are presented. Starting from a brief review of the TAB converter, the modulation scheme, power characteristics, and soft-switching region are analyzed. Then, the detailed design of the H-bridge converter building block is given. To improve the system efficiency, a comprehensive characterization of the SiC gate driver with various external gate resistances is performed to address tradeoffs between switching loss and voltage overshoot during transients, as well as the thermal performance of the H-bridge building block. In addition, the design and characterization for the 20-kHz three-port transformer are also given. Comprehensive experimental studies are conducted on a full-power prototype to verify the proposed design. With a measured 99.1% peak efficiency, the proposed TAB converter can fulfill the requirements for solar-plus-storage applications.