A New Soft Switching qZSC Converter by Using Coupled Inductor

Solar energy is a very cost efficient energy in terms of construction and maintenance that has no pollution and can be found everywhere. So, various converter topologies are used as an interface converter for solar panels. The boost converter is the conventional converter used in photovoltaic (PV) application. But, it has several problems such as instability in Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM), input inrush currents, short circuit protection and etc. These problems, lead to use Z-Source and quasi Z-Source Converter (qZSC) which have higher gain compared to traditional boost converter, lower current ripple at the input without using any extra filters, buck and boost capability, lower output ripple and higher reliability. In this paper a soft switching technique for qZSC converter with coupled inductor and without any auxiliary switch is proposed for PV application. By adding an auxiliary circuit, which includes a coupled inductor, diode and capacitor, soft switching condition is provided for all semiconductor elements of the proposed converter. The proposed converter is theoretically analyzed and to confirm the validity of the theoretical analysis, it is simulated by ORCAD and a laboratory prototype is built. The proposed converter shows six percent efficiency improvement in comparison with hard switching counterpart.