Real-time monitoring and control of a PV-fed enhanced cubic voltage gain converter for DC microgrid

Abstract

In this manuscript, a novel high-gain DC-DC converter with an ultra-step-up voltage gain value of 22.2 is introduced along with a custom-developed web application for remotely monitoring and controlling the power converter. The proposed converter is synthesized using two stages – stage 1 yields a cubic voltage gain and stage employs a diode-capacitor gain cell (DCGC) to reduce the voltage stress on the switch. The proposed gain extension hypothesis is experimentally validated through an 18 V to 400 V, 175 W prototype converter which delivers 175 W to the load at a 93.5% efficiency. The proposed converter exhibits excellent dynamic response when regulating the output voltage to 400 V over a wide range of input voltage and load current variations; the overshoots and undershoots are also negligible. Further, the maximum voltage stress on the switch is only 37.5% of the output voltage. For remotely controlling and monitoring the converter under real-time conditions with a high sampling rate, a web application is developed using React.js. The STM32 microcontroller is programmed to transmit data serially to the server, which then interacts with the web application using hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and WebSockets. The effectiveness of the developed interface is also practically verified by controlling the proposed converter in various modes viz., open-loop, soft-start, constant voltage, constant current, soft-stop, load regulation and overvoltage protection modes. Based on the comparison with several converters the proposed converter possesses unique advantages. Additionally, its web-based remote monitoring and control features are preferable for DC microgrid application.