Novel method to operation conditions identification of high-order power converters

Intermittent solar energy causes different operational modes of power converters including continuous current modes (CCMs) and discontinuous current modes (DCMs), which need appropriate control strategies and parameters assignment to ensure the functionality of the overall solar energy power generation system. Hence, it is important to identify suitable operation modes for a high-order converter system. However, for a high-order power converter (HOPC), this requires comprehensive analysis and sophisticated control design. This paper focuses on the derivation of operation modes of HOPCs to well identify their boundary conditions. As an example, a 3-Z-network converter is utilized to demonstrate analytical and design process. In detail, the equilibrium points and boundary conditions of each operation modes are first derived; then with the guidance of boundary conditions, unexpected operation modes can be avoided by parameters reassignment. Finally, simulations and experimentation on the newly established system prototype are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.