Abstract
Renewable energy sourcing has increased popularity these days because of the
issues with burning fossil fuels as an energy sources and as a way of combating
global gas emission. Thus, renewable energy has become the principal focus of
most energy-based researches. Most of the sources energy is however produce
electricity with low voltage levels and grid connection requires very high voltage
electricity for efficient transmission. This calls for step up converters with
very high voltage gains to synchronize the sourced electricity with the grid.
Also, the popular boost converters do not have high enough step up voltage
gain as their efficiency and effectiveness degrades with increasing switch duty
ratio. This research thus introduces a higher voltage gain topologies that can
be alternatives to the voltage stepping up problem in renewable energy systems.
Three different topologies that are modifications of the SEPIC converter are
presented in this research and each of the converters has a different voltage
gain of 10, 20 and 29 times the input voltage at 0.9 duty ratio. Theoretical
analysis will be used to derive the gain of the converters. Simulations with the
Matlab/Simulink and SPICE simulation software’s will be used to verify the
theoretical results. Hardware prototypes will be presented to demonstrate the
workings of the prototypes.
M.Ing. (Electrical Engineering)