This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

Soft-switching Non-isolated Current-fed

Inverter for PV/Fuel Cell Applications
K Radha Sree, Student Member, IEEE and Akshay K Rathore, Senior Member, IEEE, Elena Breaz,
Member, IEEE, and Fei Gao, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract A non-isolated impulse commutated current-fed

voltage doubler based non-isolated inverter for a solar
photovoltaic, battery or fuel cell application is proposed in this
paper. Impulse commutation enables device voltage clamping
with zero current commutation of the semiconductor devices. It
eliminates the traditional problem of turn-off voltage spike
across the devices in current-fed converters. Unlike resonant
converters, resonance pulse appears for a very short interval
leading to zero current turn-off of devices. It therefore, limits
peak and circulating currents through the components. Voltage
doubler is selected to achieve 2x gain. Variable frequency
modulation ensures output voltage regulation with input and
load variations. Steady-state operation and analysis of front-end
converter is explained. A 500 W prototype has been designed and
developed to demonstrate the performance and verify the
proposed operation, analysis, and claims.
Index Terms Current-fed converter, Impulse commutation,
Soft-switching, Non-isolated, High gain.

I. INTRODUCTION

ODERN power systems are witnessing increasing

penetration of alternative energy sources owing to
increased environmental concerns. The concept of microgrid
is now celebrated with the penetration of non-conventional
energy sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV), fuel cells, etc.
Located close to the consumers and with a potential to
improve reliability, security and quality of electrical power,
microgrids sound promising for both islanded and grid
connected modes of operation [1]-[3]. The architecture of a
simple microgrid is shown in Fig. 1. Energy storage systems
offer stability against fluctuations associated with the
alternative energy sources and grid. Power converters are
mandatory to interface alternative energy sources and storage
to the dc bus or the grid [4], to match the nature of two ports
as well as accommodate the variability and intermittency [5].
Inverters are essential to convert the variable dc from the
non-conventional energy sources and storage to facilitate gridinterface as well as to feed local ac loads [6]. The inverter
should assure lower input current ripple for precise maximum

K. Radha Sree and A. K. Rathore are with department of Electrical and

Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore. Email:
eleakr@nus.edu.sg, radha_k@u.nus.edu. PH: +65 6516 6471, Fax: +65-6779
1103. E. Breaz and F. Gao are with University of Technology of BelfortMontbelliard, France. Email: elena.breaz@utbm.fr, fei.gao@utbm.fr.

power point tracking (MPPT) in PV and fuel cells. Low input

current ripple also offers effective fuel utilization in fuel cells
etc. and enhanced battery performance. Configurations such
as the centralized inverter, string inverter, and moduleintegrated converters (MIC) are widely adopted. A detailed
review of the various MIC topologies available in literature is
highlighted in [7]. A transformerless inverter topology for
solar PV modules is proposed in [8]. It eliminates the shoot
through problem, reduces the ground currents, and
demonstrates high efficiency. Centralized inverters are
preferred when several cells are stacked to develop higher
voltage. It, therefore, does not require voltage boost and is
simpler in design and shows better efficiency. At low source
voltage, high voltage gain (up to 10-20x) is required for
mentioned applications and two-stage inverter is usually
implemented. In two stage inverters, the size of the dc link
capacitor responsible for power decoupling depreciates [9].
High-frequency (HF) transformer is usually required in case
of voltage-fed topologies. Dual-stage inverter topologies also
favor decoupled control where MPPT is realized by the dc/dc
converter and the inverter stage is responsible for the current
injection [10]. A novel dual-stage time-sharing dual mode
single-phase sine wave PWM inverter is proposed in [11]. It
minimizes the conduction and switching losses relative to a
regular hard switching boost converter based inverter
topology. Parallel resonant inverter with a dc-link switch for
soft-switching with hysteresis control is proposed in [12].
Current-fed voltage doubler can offer 10x voltage gain [13]
being transformerless and similarly a non-isolated current-fed
voltage quadrupler can offer 20x voltage gain. Current-fed
converters get inherently qualified for such applications as
they offer low input ripple [14]-[17] reducing the input filter
requirements and high voltage gain being transformerless.
Half-bridge topology comprising of dual boost converter [14],
[16] offers higher voltage gain compared to full-bridge
topology. Traditionally, dissipative snubber or active-clamp
circuit [17] is required to snub the device turn-off voltage
across the spike in current-fed converters. Dissipative
snubbers degrade the converter efficiency while the activeclamp requires floating switches and a large HF capacitor [18,
19]. Besides, a current-fed three-phase converter utilizing the
transformer leakage inductance and auxiliary capacitor to
achieve ZCS is proposed in [20]. A ZVS and ZCS operated
current-fed CL-resonant dc/dc converter is proposed in [21].

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

2
A current-fed bidirectional full-bridge converter based
inverter is proposed in [22]. The proposed converter achieves
zero current switching (ZCS) of the primary switches and zero
voltage switching (ZVS) of the secondary devices with natural
device voltage clamping. Such bidirectional converter is best
suited for interfacing batteries with dc micro-grid, fuel cell
vehicles, or interfacing two dc buses in dc micro-grid.
This paper presents a unidirectional dual-stage impulse
commutated current-fed non-isolated voltage doubler based
inverter for low voltage dc sources including solar PV and
fuel cells as shown in Fig. 2. Impulse commutation achieves
the same merits without compromising on efficiency and
without increasing the component count.
Traditionally, impulse commutation has been adopted in
inverter circuits [23]-[24]. Its implementation for the proposed
topology offers zero-current commutation of the switches and
eliminates the turn-off spike and the associated losses. The
commutation strategy also enables natural voltage clamping
(NVC) across devices. Just an additional HF small parallel
capacitor [25]-[27] provides the above-mentioned benefits.
Although variable frequency modulation controls the load
voltage and power, the control circuit is simple because the
frequency variations are immune to the load variations.
The objectives of this paper are to explain the steady-state
analysis, operation, and design of the converter along with
experimental demonstration of the inverter performance.
II. STEADY-STATE OPERATION AND ANALYSIS OF IMPULSE
COMMUTATED CURRENT-FED VOLTAGE DOUBLER
To understand the steady-state operation and analysis of the
front-end impulse commutated current-fed voltage doubler
shown in Fig. 2, the following assumptions are made: (1)
Input boost inductors are sufficiently large to carry constant
current through them and (2) all semiconductor devices are
ideal and lossless. Components Ls and Cp constitute the
resonant tank that is responsible for impulse commutation.
The duty cycle D is fixed at a value above 0.5 while
variable frequency modulation controls the power transferred
and load voltage. The equivalent circuits illustrating the
operating modes and the steady-state operating waveforms are
shown in Fig. 3 and 4, respectively.

Fig. 2. Proposed impulse commutated non-isolated current-fed inverter.

A. Interval 1 (Fig. 3(a): t0 < t < t1 power transfer mode)

Switch S1 is conducting carrying a constant current Iin while
-Iin/2 flows through the series inductor. The parallel capacitor
voltage is clamped at Vdc/2. Switch S2 is blocking the
voltage Vdc/2. Rectifier diode Dr2 is conducting to transfer
power from source to the load.
Final values: iLs (t1) = -Iin/2, iS1 (t1) = Iin, vCp (t1) = vAB = -Vdc/2.
B. Interval 2 (Fig. 3(b): t1 < t < t2)
At t = t1, switch S2 is turned-on and the device capacitance
discharges in a very short interval of time.
C. Interval 3 (Fig. 3(c): t2 < t < t3)
Now, both the switches S1 and S2 are conducting and Dr2 is
still forward biased. The current in the incoming switch S2
starts increasing while the current in S1 starts falling. Positive
voltage Vdc/2 appears across the series inductor and iLs starts
increasing. The current expressions areV t t 2 I in
(1)
iLs (t ) dc

2 Ls
2
I
V t t2
(2)
iS1 t in iLs t I in dc
2
2 Ls

I in
V t t 2
(3)
iLs t dc
2
2 Ls
At the end of the interval, iLs reaches zero and the diode Dr2
gets reverse biased. Final values: iLs (t3) = 0, iS1 (t3) = iS2 (t3) =
Iin/2, vAB (t3) = 0. The duration of this interval can be given as
L I
(4)
T32 t 3 t 2 s in
V dc
iS 2 t

D. Interval 4(Fig. 3(d): t3 < t < t4 Resonance Impulse)

Capacitors C1 and C2 constituting the voltage doubler feed
the load. The resonance between Ls and Cp commences. The
energy stored in the tank increases. The switch currents iS1 and
iS2 start decreasing and increasing, respectively in a resonant
fashion. The resonant frequency and the characteristic
impedance at resonance can be given as
(5)
f r 1 2 Ls C p

Z r Ls C p

(6)

The current expressions are given as

V
iLs t dc sin 2f r t t3
2Z r

(7)

iS1 t

I in Vdc

sin 2f r t t3
2 2Z r

Fig. 1. Residential micro-grid system.

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

(8)

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

3
I in Vdc
(9)

sin 2f r t t3
2 2Z r
The voltage appearing across Cp is
V
(10)
vCp t dc cos2f r t t3
2
Final values: iLs (t4) = Iin/2, iS1 (t4) = 0, iS2 (t4) = Iin. The
duration of this interval can be given as
iS 2 t

T43 t 4 t 3

I Z
1
sin 1 in r
2f r
Vdc

T76 t 7 t 6

Ls

max

2Z r

70

VDr1 VDr 2 Vdc

VC1 VC 2
VCp

Vdc

Vdc

(19)

(20)

V dc

V in
1 f
n
4 4

n
2

1 x 1 sin 1 x 1 1 x

2
x

Where the normalized load rn can be given as the ratio of full

load resistance RFL and the characteristic impedance Zr, the
normalized frequency fn is the ratio of switching frequency fs
to the resonant frequency fr and x is given as M/rn. For the
given specifications and for a chosen Zr, the voltage gain
expression can be approximated as

At the end of this interval, the voltage across Cp gets clamped

to Vdc/2 and the rectifier diode Dr1 gets forward biased and
thus power gets transferred from source to load. Final values:
iS1 (t7) = 0 and iS2 (t7) = Iin, iLs (t7) = Iin/2, vCp (t7) = Vdc/2 and
vAB (t7) = Vdc/2. The duration of this interval can be given as

(b)

(18)

A. Converter voltage gain

The DC gain of the converter, which is a function of the
normalized load rn and the normalized frequency fn is given as
(21)

G. Interval 7 (Fig. 3(g): t6 < t < t7 Cp charging)

During this interval, constant current Iin/2 from the boost
inductor flows through the series inductor and this charges the
parallel capacitor Cp. The voltage across the series inductor is
zero. Also, the input current flows through the switch S2. The
expressions governing this interval can be given as
V
I
(14)
v t dc cos 2f T in t t
2C p

Design of the impulse commutated current-fed voltage

doubler is explained with a design example. The
specifications of the converter are tabulated in Table I.
V
(17)
VS 1 VS 2 dc

r 42

III. DESIGN PROCEDURE AND CONSIDERATIONS

F. Interval 6 (Fig. 3(f): t5 < t < t6)

During this short interval, the device capacitance CS1 gets
charged and the voltage across it builds up from 0 to Vdc/2.

(11)

The switch S1 is turned-off with ZCS during this interval.

Resonance ends at the end of this interval and iLs decreases to
Iin/2. Final values: iLs (t5) = Iin/2, iS1 (t5) = 0, iS2 (t5) = Iin. The
duration T53 is given as
2f rT43
(13)
T53 t 5t3
2f r

Cp

(15)

I in

The intervals repeat in the same sequence with the

symmetrical devices conducting during the other half cycle.
Intervals 1 to 7 cover half of the switching period. Therefore,
T
(16)
T t t s

E. Interval 5 (Fig. 3(e): t4 < t < t5 ZCS)

Due to resonance, current iLs rises above Iin/2. This
additional current flows through the body-diode of S1 leading
to ZCS turn-off of switch S1. At t = tx, the current iLs reaches
its peak value Ip while the voltage across Cp reaches zero. The
necessary condition for ZCS is formulated as
V
I
(12)
I i t
dc in
p

Vdc 1 cos2f r T53 C p

(a)

(c)

(e)
(f)
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuits depicting the different intervals of operation of the front-end converter.

(d)

(g)

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

4
A. Duty ratio
Variable frequency modulation controls the power
transferred from source to load at fixed value of duty cycle D.
To ensure ZCS with variation in input voltage, it is mandatory
to select D such that
(23)
Dmin D Dmax
Where, Dmin and Dmax can be given as

Dmin 0.5

I Z
Ls I in f s
f
n sin 1 in r
Vdc
2
Vdc

Dmax 0.5

I Z f
Ls I in f s
f
n sin 1 in r n
Vdc
2
Vdc 2

(24)

(25)

B. Current stress
The rms current through the switches is given by
12

1
1
x

(26)

I S 1, rms I S 2, rms I in f n
sin 1 x

2
4
6

The rms current flowing through each switch was computed to

be 7.36 A and 8.4 A for Vin = 48 and 42 V under full load
conditions. The average current through the rectifier diodes
can be given as
V
(27)
I Dr1, avg I Dr 2, avg dc
RL
The average current through the rectifier diodes is equal to the
load current.

Fig. 4. Steady-state operating waveforms of the front-end converter.

TABLE I SPECIFICATIONS OF THE PROPOSED TOPOLOGY
Parameters
Values
Input voltage Vin
42 V 48 V
DC link voltage Vdc
200 V
RMS value of the output voltage Vo
110 V
Peak output power Po
500 W
Switching frequency range of the converter fs
50 kHz 150 kHz
Switching frequency of the inverter
50 kHz
Frequency of the output waveform
50 Hz

Vdc
1

Vin 0.251 f n

(22)

The theoretical range of fs for variations in input voltage and

load can be computed from (22). For this specific design
example this range is between 50 kHz 150 kHz for
variations in Vin from 48 V down to 42 V.

C. ZCS Condition
Energy stored in capacitor Cp is responsible for achieving
and perpetuating ZCS with input voltage and load variations.
Its imperative to maintain stored energy in Cp at a higher
value as this circulating energy makes body-diode conduction
resulting in ZCS under all operating conditions. At the same
time, the maximum circulating energy that can be allowed for
ZCS operation has to be limited to minimize the associated
conduction losses. This goal is met by meticulously choosing
Zr that limits the peak current through the components. The
limitation on Zr can be given as
V
R
(28)
Z r in ,min FL
Vdc
where Vin,min is the minimum input voltage. With increase in
the range of input voltage variations, the chosen value of Zr
should be as small as possible to perpetuate ZCS operation
whilst this leads to increase in the circulating energy. But as
this energy circulates for considerably a short duration, it
doesnt substantially reduce the converter efficiency unlike
resonant converters.
D. Parameters of the resonant tank
Resonant tank parameters can be computed using (5) and (6)
once fs for the maximum gain condition is fixed. The
resonant frequency can be computed using (22). In this
design example, Zr =7.5 was selected to limit peak current
through the switches during overlap to 13.30 A using (12)
and to maintain ZCS between 48 V to 42 V. The computed
L and C values are 1.19 H and 21.2 nF, respectively.

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

Fig. 5. Experimental setup of proposed two-stage inverter.

TABLE II PARAMETERS OF THE LABORATORY PROTOTYPE
Components
Parameters
MPP powder Core CS468125; 51 turns; 476
Boost Inductors L1~ L2
H;
Converter switches S1~S2
IPP110N20N3; 200V; 88A; Rds,on = 10.7m
Series inductor Ls
TDK RM14 PC40Z core, Ls = 1.19H
Parallel capacitor Cp
21.2nF, 1000V ceramic capacitor
4.7mF, 50V electrolytic & 2.2F, 400V HF
Input capacitor Cin
film capacitor
100 F, 400V electrolytic capacitor & 2.2F,
Output capacitors C1, C2
400V HF film capacitor
Rectifier diodes Dr1, Dr2
STTH30R04; 400; 30 A; VF = 0.97 V
Inverter switches S3 ~ S6
IPP60R125CP, 600 V, CoolMos.
T300-40 MPP Powder core
Output filter inductor Lf
Number of turns N = 285, Lf = 5.5mH
Output filter capacitor Cf
0.47 F, 1000 V, HF film capacitor

E. Body-diode conduction time

The anti-parallel body-diode D1 and D2 conduction time
ensures ZCS turn-off of the switches and is given (13). It is
approximately 0.33 s for Vin = 48 V, 500 W.
F. Boost inductor design
The inductances of the boost inductors is calculated as
V DTs T54
(29)
L in
I in
Where, Iin is the input current ripple. The inductances were
computed to be 400 H for Iin 0.4 A.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The laboratory prototype of the experimental inverter, i.e.,
proposed non-isolated current-fed voltage doubler followed
by full-bridge inverter, rated at 500W is shown in Fig. 5. The
details of the prototype are given in Table II. Gating signals
for the switches were generated using Altera DE0Nano. Fig.
6 presents the experimental results for Vin = 48 V at 500 W.
Input inductor and inductors currents waveforms are shown
in Fig. 6(a). Input current is quite stiff dc. Inductors currents
are 180o phase-shifted with low ripple. Input filter
requirements are reduced because the ripple frequency is 2xfs.
Impulse commutation enabling ZCS turn-off of switch S2 is
shown in Fig. 6(b). The following can be inferred: (1)
Negative portion of iS2 indicates the anti-parallel body-diode

conduction and (2) Voltage across the switch VdS2 rises after
the body-diode commutates. The gating signal for S2 is
removed during the body-diode conduction. Overall, S2 turnsoff with ZCS eliminating the turn-off spike. Additionally, it
should be observed that switch voltage VdS2 is clamped
naturally at Vdc/2. Commutation of S1 takes place after 180.
Transformer voltage VAB with magnitude Vdc/2 is shown in
Fig. 6(c). Series inductor current iLs and the parallel capacitor
voltage VCp are shown. It is evident that the commutation
occurs during the overlap period (VAB = 0). The capacitor
voltage VCp also gets clamped to Vdc/2.
During the overlap period, the resonance causes the current
to rise above boost inductor current value Iin/2. The additional
current flows through the anti-parallel body-diode assisting in
ZCS turn-off of the switches.
During the overlap period no power is transferred to the
load. Once iLs becomes constant following resonance and after
VCp gets clamped to Vdc/2, the rectifier diode Dr1 gets forward
biased supplying power to the load. The current through the
rectifier diode Dr1 and the voltage across it is shown in Fig. 6
(d). This further affirms the ZCS operation of the rectifier
diodes. Fig. 6(d) also emphasizes the fact that the rectifier
diodes commutate with ZCS and the losses associated due to
reverse recovery and ringing are eliminated. Secondary
snubbers are not required due to the aforementioned reason.
The rectifier diodes block the dc link voltage Vdc.
The same explanation holds good for the other operating
condition depicted in Fig. 7 for output power of 100 W at Vin
= 48 V. Similar, waveforms with higher peak current is
observed at Vin = 42 V at output power of 500 W and 100 W
in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, respectively.
It should be noted that the peak current flowing through the
series inductor Ls is the same under all operating conditions
(Vdc/2Zr) while the ratio of the peak to the constant current
(Iin/2) changes with the load and input voltage variations.
Current (ILs,peak - Iin/2) will be the maximum current flowing
through the body-diode of the switches and with higher input
voltage this circulating current decreases. Hence, to perpetuate
ZCS with change in input voltage, it is necessary to choose Zr
diligently such that ILs,peak gets minimized and at the same time
sufficient circulating current is available to allow body-diode
conduction with variation in input voltage. The experimental
results sighted above match closely with the steady-state
operating waveforms shown in Fig. 4. The additional current
aided by capacitor Cp circulates only during the overlap
period, i.e., resonance duration.

(a)

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

(d)
(c)
(b)
Fig. 6. Experimental results for Vin = 48 V, 500 W (full load): (a) Input current Iin and Boost inductor currents iL1 and iL2 (2 A/ div; 10 s/div), (b) gate-source
voltage vgs2 (20 V/div, 5 s/div), drain-source voltage vds2 (200 V/div, 5 s/div) and current through switch S2 (20 A/div, 5 s/div), (c) voltage across AB (200
V/div, 5 s/div), voltage across the parallel capacitor Cp (200 V/div, 5 s/div) and current iLs through the series inductor (20 A/div, 5 s/div) and (d) rectifier
diode voltages vDr1 and vDr2 (200 V/div, 5 s/div) and series inductor current iLs (20 A/div, 5 s/div).

(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 7. Experimental results for Vin = 48 V, 100 W (20% load): (a) gate-source voltage vgs2 (20 V/div, 5 s/div), drain-source voltage vds2 (200 V/div, 5 s/div)
and current through switch S2 (20 A/div, 5 s/div), (b) voltage across AB (200 V/div, 5 s/div), voltage across the parallel capacitor Cp (200 V/div, 5 s/div) and
current iLs through the series inductor (20 A/div, 5 s/div) and (c) rectifier diode voltages vDr1 and vDr2 (200 V/div, 5 s/div) and inductor current iLs (20 A/div, 5
s/div).

(c)
(b)
(a)
Fig. 8. Experimental results for Vin = 42 V, 500 W (full load): (a) gate-source voltage vgs2 (20 V/div, 2 s/div), drain-source voltage vds2 (200 V/div, 2 s/div) and
current through switch S2 (20 A/div, 2 s/div), (b) voltage across AB (200 V/div, 2 s/div), voltage across the parallel capacitor Cp (200 V/div, 2 s/div) and
current iLs through the series inductor (20 A/div, 2 s/div) and (c) rectifier diode voltages vDr1 (200 V/div, 2 s/div) and diode current iDr1 (20 A/div, 2 s/div).

(b)
(c)
(a)
Fig. 9. Experimental results for Vin = 42 V, 100 W (20 % load): (a) Input current Iin (10 A/ div; 5 s/div) and Boost inductor currents iL1 and iL2 (2 A/ div; 5
s/div), (b) gate-source voltage vgs2 (20 V/div, 2 s/div), drain-source voltage vds2 (200 V/div, 2 s/div) and current through switch S2 (20 A/div, 2 s/div) and (c)
voltage across AB (200 V/div, 2 s/div), voltage across the parallel capacitor Cp (200 V/div, 2 s/div) and current iLs through the series inductor (20 A/div, 2
s/div).

It doesnt substantially increase the rms current through the

devices. This minimizes the conduction losses in the circuit.
The voltage doubler circuit on the secondary offers 2x voltage
gain and the rest is obtained from the boost converter.
Losses in the rectifier diode have been eliminated because
of voltage doubler circuit. This has a significant impact on

converter efficiency. The frequency range in practice with

variation in input voltage Vin is between 50 kHz 170 kHz at
full load condition. The frequency variation is less sensitive to
the load variations from full load down to 20% load.
Experimental results for next stage full-bridge inverter are
shown in Fig. 10.

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

(c)
(a)
(b)
Fig. 10. Experimental results from the inverter circuit (x-axis: 5ms/div): (a) Gate to source voltage vgs5 (20 V/ div) and drain to source voltage vds3 (200 V/ div),
(b) gate to source voltage vgs4 (20 V/ div) and drain to source voltage vds4 (200 V/ div) (c) load current Io (20 A/ div) and load voltage Vo (500 V/ div) at 500 W.

source is shown in Fig. 12. The converter demonstrates high

efficiency with input variations that is obvious in PV and fuel
cells. The proposed inverter is also suitable for micro inverter
applications.
V. CONCLUSION

Fig. 11. Loss distrubution in dc/dc converter at 500 W.

Fig. 12. Efficiency curve of dc/dc convetrer with variations.

Experimental results for next stage full-bridge inverter are

shown in Fig. 10. The gating signals and the voltage across
the switches S4 and S5 in one leg in the circuit is shown in Fig.
10(a) and Fig. 10(b) respectively. It is clear that the pair of
bottom switches S4 and S6 are operated at line frequency
minimizing the switching losses. The other pair is operated at
high frequency (50 kHz). The load current and the load
voltage at 500 W are shown in Fig. 10(c). The LC filter (Lf
and Cf) at the output stage and the line frequency modulation
reduces the distortion in the output voltage and current
waveforms favoring the use of the proposed two-stage
inverter.
Full load efficiency of the impulse commutated current-fed
voltage doubler is about 96.3 % for Vin = 48 V and about 96 %
for Vin = 42 V, respectively. While the efficiency at 20 % load
gets maintained at 91.2 % and 89 % for Vin = 48 V and Vin =
42 V, respectively. The rated efficiency of the overall twostage inverter is obtained as 93.4%. Loss distribution in the
current-fed voltage doubler at rated power of 500 W is shown
in Fig. 11. The efficiency curve with the variability of the

A dual stage non-isolated inverter with front-end currentfed interleaved voltage doubler is proposed for low dc voltage
renewable energy sources as well as energy storage
applications. An impulse-commutated circuit is implemented
to assist in zero current commutation and device voltage
clamping of the switches. ZCS turn-off of all semiconductor
devices is obtained. Voltage doubler offers 2x voltage gain.
The current-fed converter takes care of the stringent current
ripple requirements set by the PV or fuel cells. Impulse
commutation circuit can utilize the circuit parasitics to assist
in soft switching and voltage clamping. It also facilitates load
adaptive ZCS and perpetuates ZCS even with input voltage
variations. The voltage regulation is inherently less sensitive
to load variation making the control simple. Only one leg of
the next stage full-bridge inverter operates at HF while the
other leg operates at line frequency resulting in reduced
switching losses and low distortion in output ac waveforms.
Comprehensive analysis has been presented together with the
experimental results to verify the proposed design and
demonstrate the performance of the inverter.
REFERENCES
[1]

[2]
[3]

[4]

[5]
[6]

S. M. Ashabani, Mohamed and Y. A. -R. I, New family of microgrid

control and managemnet strategies in smart grid distribution grids
Analysis, comparison and testing, IEEE Trans. Power Systems., vol. 29,
no. 5, pp. 2257-2269, Sept. 2010.
J. Rocabert, A. Luna, F. Blaabjerg and P. Roddriguez, Control of power
converters in AC microgrids, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 27, no.
11, pp. 4734-4749, Nov. 2010.
X. Yu, A. M. Khambadkone, H. Wang and S. Terence, Control of
parallel-connected power converters for low-voltage microgrid Part I:
A hybrid control architecture, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 25,
no. 12, pp. 2962-2970, Dec. 2010.
J. L. Duarte and M. A. M. Hendrix, Grid-interfacing converter systems
with enhanced voltage quality for microgrid application concept and
implementation, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 26, no. 12, pp.
3501-3513, Dec. 2011.
J. Jiang, X. Huang and S. Stevandic, Modelling of fuel-cell-based
power supply system for grid interface, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 48,
no. 4, pp. 1142-1153, May. 2012.
S. B. Kjaer J. K. Pedersen and F. Blaabjerg, A review of single-phase
grid-connected inverters for photovoltaic modules, IEEE Trans. Ind.
Appl., vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 1292-1306, Sept./Oct. 2005.

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/TIA.2015.2472360, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

8
[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]
[11]

[12]
[13]

[14]

[15]
[16]

[17]

[18]
[19]
[20]

[21]
[22]

[23]
[24]
[25]

[26]

Q. Li and P. Wolfs, A review of the single phase photovoltaic module

integrated converter topologies with three different dc link
configurations, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 13201333, May. 2008.
B. Gu, J. Dominic, J.- S. Lai and C.- L. Chen, High reliability and
efficieny single-phase transformerless inverter for grid connected
photovoltaic systems, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 28, no. 5, pp.
2235-2245, May. 2013.
D. Meneses, F. Blaabjerg, O. Garcia and J. A. Cobos, Review and
comparison of step-up transformless topologies for photovoltaic ACmodule application, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 28, no. 6, pp.
2649-2663, Jun. 2013.
M. E. Ahmed, M. Orabi and O. A. Rahim, Two-stage micro-grid
inverter with high voltage gain for PV applications, IET Power
Electronics journal, vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 18121821, Nov. 2013.
K. Ogura, T. Nishida, E. Hiraki and M. Nakaoka, Time-sharing boost
chopper cascaded dual mode single-phase sinewave inverter for solar
photovoltaic power generation system, in Proc. IEEE Power
Electronics Specialists Conf. (PESC), Germany, pp. 4763-4767, Jun.
2004.
Y. Kim, J. Kim and Y. Ji, Photovoltaic parallel resonant DC-link soft
switching inverter using hysteresis current control, in Proc. IEEE Appl.
Power Electron. Conf. Expo., 2010, pp. 2275-2280.
K. Fathy, H. W. Lee, T. Mishima and M. Nakaoka, Boost Half-Bridge
Single Power Stage PWM DC-DC Converter foe Small Scale Fuel Cell
Stack, in Proc. IEEE Power and Energy Conference PECon., 2006, pp.
426-431, Putra Jaya.
U. R. Prasanna, and A. K. Rathore, Anaysis, Design and experimental
results of novel snubberless bidirectional naturally clamped ZCS/ZVS
current-fed half-bridge dc/dc converter for fuel cell vehicles, IEEE
Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 60, no. 10, pp. 4482-4491, Oct. 2013.
H. Kim, C. Yoon and S. Choi, An improved current-fed ZVS isolated
boost converter for fuel cell applications, IEEE Trans. Power Electron.,
vol. 25, no. 9, pp. 2357-2364, Sept. 2010.
U. R. Prasanna, A. K. Rathore and S. K. Mazumder, Novel zero
current-switching current-fed half-bridge isolated DC/DC converter for
fuel-cell-based applications, IEEE Trans.Ind. Appl., vol. 49, no. 4, pp.
1658-1668, Jul./Aug. 2013.
J. M. Kwon and B. H. Kwon High step-up active-clamp converter
with input-current doubler and output-voltage doubler for fuel cell
power systems, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 108115, Jan. 2009.
S. Lee, J. Park and S. Choi, A Three-Phase Current-Fed Push-Pull DCDC Converter with Active Clamp for Fuel Cell Applications, IEEE
Trans. Power Electron., vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 2266-2277, Aug. 2011.
H. Cha, J. Choi and P. N. Enjeti, A Three-Phase Current-Fed DC-DC
Converter with Active Clamp for Low-DC Renewable Energy Sources,
IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 2784-2793, Nov. 2008.
A. Mohammadpour, T. Li and L. Parsa, Three-Phase Current-Fed Zero
Current Switching Phase-Shift PWM DC-DC Converter, in Proc. IEEE
Energy Conversion Conference and Exposition (ECCE)., 2014, pp.
5079-5084, Pittsburgh.
C. L. Chu and C. H. Li, Analysis and design of a current-fed zero
voltage-switching and zero-current-switching CL-resonant push-pull dcdc converter, IET Power Electron., vol. 2, pp. 456465, Jul. 2009.
P. Xuewei, A. K. Rathore and P. Rajagopal, Novel soft-switching
snubberless naturally clamped current-fed full-bridge front-end
converter based bidirectional inverter for renewables, microgrid and
UPS
applications,
IEEE
Trans.
Ind.
Appl.,
DOI.
10.1109/TIA.2014.2315493.
B. D. Bedoford and R. G. Hoft, Principle of inverter circuits. NewYork,
NY: John Wiley, 1964.
A. J. Humphrey, Inverter commutation circuits, IEEE Trans Industry
and General Applications, vol. IGA-4, no. 1. Pp. 104-110, Jan./Feb.
1968.
B. Yuan, X. Yang, X. Zeng, J. Duan, J. Zhai and L. Donghao, Analysis
and design of a high dtep-up current-fed multiresonant DC-C converter
with low circulating energy and zero-current switching for all active
switches, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 964-978, Feb.
2012.
R. Y. Chen, T. J. Liang, J. F. Chen, R. L. Lin and K. C. Tseng,
Study and implementation of a current-fed full-bridge boost DC-DC

converter with zero-current switching for high voltage applications,

IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 1218-1226, Jul./Aug. 2008.
[27] K. R. Sree and A. K. Rathore, Impulse Commutated Zero Current
Switching Current-fed Three-phase DC/DC Converter, in Proc. IEEE
Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems (PEDES)., 2014, pp. 1-6,
Mumbai.
K Radha Sree (S09) received her Bachelor's
degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of
Engineering, affiliated to Anna University,
Chennai, India in 2012. She is currently pursuing
her Ph.D. in the area of Power Electronics in the
department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, National University of Singapore,
Singapore. Her research interests include development of current-fed
converter technologies for renewable and distributed energy systems.
Akshay Kumar Rathore (M05, SM12)
received his Masters degree from Indian Institute
of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, India in 2003.
He was awarded Gold Medal for securing highest
academic standing. He obtained his PhD from
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada in
2008. He was a recipient of University PhD
Fellowship
and
Thouvenelle
Graduate
Scholarship. He had two subsequent postdoctoral
research appointments with University of Wuppertal, Germany, and
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.
Since November 2010, he is an Assistant Professor in Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore,
Singapore. He has published above 120 research papers in international
journals and conferences.
He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications,
IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, IEEE Journal of
Emerging Selected Topics in Power Electronics, and IET Power Electronics.
He is also an editor of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.
Dr. Rathore is a winner and recipient of 2013 IEEE IAS Andrew W Smith
Outstanding Young Member Award and 2014 Isao Takahashi Power
Electronics Award.

Elena Breaz (M11) is currently an assistant

professor at the University of Technology of
Belfort-Montbeliard (UTBM), Belfort, France.
She received the Master degree in electrical
engineering from Technical University of ClujNapoca in 2009 and the PhD degree in
engineering science in 2012 from the same
university in Romania. Her main research areas
include fuel cell modeling, electric hybrid
vehicle design and real time simulation
technology for energy systems. Since 2012, she is also a faculty member of
the electrical engineering department of Technical University of Cluj-Napoca.

Fei Gao (S08 M10 SM15) is currently an

associate professor at the University of
Technology of Belfort-Montbeliard (UTBM),
Belfort, France. He received respectively from
UTBM the Master's degree in electrical and
control system engineering in 2007, and the PhD
degree in renewable energy with distinguished
youth doctor reward in 2010. His main research
fields include fuel cells and their applications in
transportation, multi-physical modeling and real
time simulation systems. He is the head of the energy production division of
energy department of UTBM, and the chair of fuel cell modeling axis of the
Fuel Cell Research Federation (FR CNRS) in France.

0093-9994 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.