This paper presents a Minimum Stress Factor Tracking (MSFT) algorithm designed for a T-Type Dual Active Bridge (DAB) DC-DC converter, aimed at electric vehicle (EV) charging applications. The proposed system dynamically selects among six different modulation configurations by evaluating a weighted combination of three normalized stress factors: Semiconductor Component Stress Factor (SCSF), Capacitor Component Stress Factor (CCSF), and Transformer Winding Component Stress Factor (WCSF). Each stress factor is mathematically modeled across the full operating range, allowing real-time optimization without dependency on runtime simulations. The weighting factors are user-defined and sum to unity, offering flexibility to adapt the stress minimization strategy according to specific reliability requirements. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves significant stress reduction on critical components while maintaining full controllability and capacitor voltage balance. This methodology addresses a seldom-explored aspect in the current literature, opening a new path for reliability-oriented optimization in T-Type DAB converters for EV charging systems.

This article presents a structured methodology for migrating digital control algorithms developed in high-level languages into synthesizable HDL suitable for ASIC implementation. A proportional-integral controller for a three-level flying capacitor converter is used as a representative case study to demonstrate the design flow. The methodology encompasses initial modeling using floating-point arithmetic, conversion to fixed-point representation, generation of reference models for validation, translation to C/C++, and high-level synthesis for HDL generation. Preliminary results consider co-simulation to ensure behavioral consistency between the high-level description and the generated HDL. The HDL was successfully synthesized using the open-source LibreLane tool-chain targeting the SkyWater SKY130 PDK. Ongoing work includes FPGA-based prototyping and detailed characterization of the ASIC. The proposed approach establishes a verified and systematic pathway for transitioning high-level control logic to ASIC-ready hardware implementations, preserving the original algorithmic behavior across abstraction levels.

This work presents the evolution of a Three-Level Flying Capacitor Converter (3L-FCC) ASIC design from earlystage modeling and simulation towards full integration in a mixed-signal ASIC. As an intermediate step, the power converter core was first implemented in an analog ASIC, complemented by a System-on-Chip (SoC) integrating an embedded CPU for the digital control loop and FPGA fabric for the modulation scheme. This hybrid platform enabled functional validation and post-silicon testing of the analog stage before migrating the remaining digital control and phase-shifted pulse-width modulation (PS PWM) logic into the ASIC. In the current stage of the project, the control architecture is being migrated to a hardware description language (HDL) implementation, with the goal of enabling full integration into a standard digital design flow for mixed-signal ASICs. An FPGA-based prototype is being used to verify functionality and assess timing performance prior to full integration, providing a validation path towards future monolithic implementation.

Power systems are experiencing a rapid and dramatic transformation driven by the massive integration of nondispatchable renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, and highly variable loads, such as electric vehicles and air conditioning. This challenges existing grid assets, eventually leading to updating them, which, in turn, increases significantly the costs of sustainable technologies. Power electronics is a pivotal technology for electrical power processing for renewable energies and sustainable transportation. By means of “smart” functionalities, power electronics converters already embedded in such applications can also contribute to guaranteeing the overall system’s stable operation. Anyway, this cooperative contribution from distributed devices may be not enough leading to the need for the voltage transformation and power transmission of “system-level” power electronics solutions. In the case of large charging stations, a smart transformer (ST), while, in the case of large solar and wind parks, integration medium- or high-voltage direct current (HVdc) transmissions are system-level solutions. This article wants to review the potential of using such infrastructures to increase the capacity of existing grid assets, avoiding or deferring their upgrade and, hence, reducing the overall costs of renewables integration and the electrification of the transport sector. In fact, the power converters embedded in ST and HVdc can provide fast frequency and voltage response, and precise control of power flow acting at the system level much more effectively and feasibly for system operators as the distributed power converters embedded in several small sources and users. This article reviews, for the first time, these two key power electronics “system-level” solutions together—ST and HVdc—starting from their basic functionalities and showings how they can go beyond them, showing how, with grid-forming functionalities, they can offer new “smart grid” tools to enhance the capability of the existing electric grid infrastructures.

Electromobility has been growing rapidly in recent years, as a result of green and sustainability policies that promote it, but its growth has been hampered by having less autonomy than combustion vehicles, not being able to directly replace them especially in heavy-duty electric vehicles powertrains. The main objective of this work is to propose an improvement to an already implemented Bidirectional Dual-Active-Bridge (DAB) Partial Power Converter (PPC) topology, seeking to boost efficiency by testing different modulations. The modulation study applied to PPC is interesting in order to identify the cases where the RMS current in the transformer is minimized. Results of the study shows that efficiency of the DAB-based PPC can be optimized by using the correct modulation, with a possible maximum efficiency of 99.41% at 6.526 kW.

DC microgrids have been gaining importance in modern power grids. Thanks to its DC nature, photovoltaic (PV) energy generation fits perfectly as a renewable source for DC microgrids. In this context, DC-DC converters are used to interconnect the PV source with the DC bus of the microgrid. This paper proposes a new transformerless partial power AC-link converter which can be used for this purpose. Unlike traditional partial power converters, the proposed solution does not require the use of a transformer. A reduced dynamic average model of the new converter is presented and detailed operation of the proposed converter is given, along with simulation results, to validate the converter’s behavior. Results on a 6.5 kW PV system show a maximum efficiency of 98.7%, confirming the interest of the proposed transformerless partial power AC-link converter in a DC microgrid.

One of current challenges in high-density electric vehicles (EVs) is the efficient thermal control of power converters and the reliable management of power flows in motoring/breaking mode for the battery bank. In this line, this paper presents an Active Thermal Control (ATC) scheme to regulate thermal stress in Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistors (GaN HEMTs) devices of a three-level bidirectional buck-boost DC-DC converter (TLBBC) as a power interface between battery and motor inverter. The TLBBC is designed to operate at a rated power of 20 kW as part of a modular system, by using parallel GaN devices. Proposed control schemes are implemented using systematic linear control design. Finally, the system is simulated and tested for a Mission Profile-Oriented (MPO) based on Highway Fuel Economy Test (HWFET) in order to validate the proposed control schemes.

Fault tolerant (FT) operation in photovoltaic (PV) inverters is gaining increased attention in order to improve system availability. Conventional string PV inverters lack the ability to eliminate the leakage currents of the system during fault modes of operation. Therefore, traditional PV inverters are modified through modulations and structures to tolerate such faults. However, proper operation and control of FT-PV-inverters remain challenging, particularly on the better utilization of the extra added components. This paper proposes a new modulation method for eliminating the PV inverter leakage current in normal and faulty modes of operations. The sinusoidal based pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme is modified for implementing the new proposed modulation. In addition, the proposed PWM is capable of preserving full rating and energy efficiency operation of the inverter with leakage current elimination in both the normal and faulty operating modes. The proposed inverter and modulation method are implemented and tested at various conditions. The results confirm the superiority and leakage current elimination capability of the new proposed PWM method.

Increasing the amount of energy extracted from a large-scale photovoltaic (PV) plant directly impacts its profitability. Obtaining higher energy yields depends heavily on the efficiency of the power conversion stages, but also on the configuration of the PV plant. More distributed maximum power point tracking (MPPT) among PV modules, allows maximizing the amount of energy extracted, especially under non-uniform conditions. To deal with partial shading conditions at module level, a sub-module power optimizer based on partial power converters is proposed. The configuration employs an isolated partial DC-DC power converters allowing to decouple the shaded parts from the unshaded at PV module level, maximizing the energy extracted. The behavior of the proposed configuration is verified through simulation, which is compared with a classic string configuration through analysis based on performance, improvements, and drawbacks of the proposed structure under mismatching scenarios.

Inductors with soft saturation cores built on compressed iron powder have higher saturation flux densities in comparison to ferrite gapped inductors, exhibiting a gradual drop of permeability for increasing magnetic field strength. This behavior yields to a gradual drop of differential inductance for increasing current, which avoids sudden core saturation and overcurrent produced in hard saturation cores as the inductance plummets when the maximum flux density is reached. However, the inductance in soft saturation cores starts dropping in the wide range of nominal current operation, increasing the complexity of the converter model and the control scheme. In this work, an interleaved dc-dc converter for supercapacitor management is modeled in continuous and discontinuous conduction mode, considering an inductor core with a linear drop in the differential inductance. A suitable current control strategy is proposed. Analysis of the model is given and simulated results that confirm the performance of the proposed control strategy are shown.

This paper presents the design of a model predictive controller for grid-tie multilevel photovoltaic inverters. The proposed control scheme has a cascade-free structure and it uses a simple cost function optimization algorithm to compute the control action to be applied at the next sampling period. The cost function is designed by merging the grid current tracking with the overall dc-link voltage control and the neutral-point voltage minimization, avoiding the extra linear controllers used by conventional schemes. The strategy is validated in a three-level inverter connected to the mains trough simulation results using measured irradiance and temperature profiles.

This paper presents an electrorefining plant operating with a photovoltaic dc-dc direct power interface. Different PV dc-dc power configurations are presented as alternative to partially feed the electrorefining process. The proposed power configuration is based on a multi-string dc-dc conversion system to achieve maximum power point tracking on each string, the electrorefining plant is fed through an interleaved isolated H-bridge dc-dc converter. The proposed configuration and control scheme are validated trough simulation results and tested under dynamic conditions.

The control strategies that use modulation techniques have great acceptance in the current control of static power converters. Indeed, they offer a wide variety of alternatives to address the steady-state characteristics required by the system. Nevertheless, its computation and modulation delay negatively affects its dynamic performance. In order to improve the time response of the system, the modulator is avoided and the strategies of direct choice of the switching state have been presented. They can provide a very fast dynamic response; however, the absence of switching state sequences makes more complex the task of establishing specific switching features for improved steady-state performance. In this work, a control scheme that selects a specific control strategy according to the operating condition of the system is proposed. This allows using modulators to satisfy the switching characteristics required in steady-state and avoids its use when a rapid dynamic response is required. In addition, a soft transition method between the control strategies is presented to prevent unwanted behaviors when these are alternated. The proposed control scheme allows simplifying the design and keeps the main advantages of each selected strategy. To validate the scheme, experimental results are obtained for a control structure that alternates between a finite set model predictive control (direct type for rapid dynamic response) and a proportional integral (PI) control with sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) (modulated type for high steady-state performance).

This work proposes a new control scheme for electrical drives system, named cascaded predictive speed control (PSC). The strategy seeks to maintain the simplicity of the classic predictive control while excluding linear or other controllers. The control strategy has a cascade architecture, similar to the techniques of classical control (FOC or DTC). The outer loop controls the speed of the machine, determining a reference torque through a mechanical dynamic model, which allows tracking the speed reference. The inner loop controls the stator current with a cost function that selects the state of the converter which generates the best tracking references for the stator current synchronous components. Preliminary simulation results confirm the effectiveness of this approach, which produces produces a high quality drive control.

This investigation presents a grid-connected five-level H-bridge neutral-point-clamped converter operating with a single dc-link as photovoltaic power source. The operation with a single dc-bus is enabled by adding a transformer with open-end winding secondary, where each power cell of the converter is connected. The proposed control scheme is validated trough simulation results and tested under dynamic conditions. It can be implemented with a good tracking of the active and reactive power references injected to the grid. The results serve as a preliminary validation to potential utilization of the converter in large scale photovoltaic energy conversion systems.

Direct matrix converter (DMC) is an AC-to-AC direct power conversion topology based on controlled bi-directional switches that can generate variable output voltages and sinusoidal source currents with variable power factor. Cascaded Matrix Converter (CMC) is a multilevel converter which combines the main characteristics of multi-cell power topologies and direct power conversion. The basic module is based on 3×2 direct matrix converter cell. This converter is fully regenerative, with multilevel output voltage and sinusoidal source current. In this work a reactive power control using a phase-shifted PWM scheme is presented. The modulation scheme can be developed using a simple digital logic and the results from open and closed loop tests are presented to evaluate the performance of proposed modulation.

This paper addresses to some of the latest contributions on the application of Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control (FCS-MPC) in Power Electronics. In FCS-MPC , the switching states are directly applied to the power converter, without the need of an additional modulation stage. The paper shows how the use of FCS-MPC provides a simple and efficient computational realization for different control objectives in Power Electronics. Some applications of this technology in drives, active filters, power conditioning, distributed generation and renewable energy are covered. Finally, attention is paid to the discussion of new trends in this technology and to the identification of open questions and future research topics.