An adaptive energy storage technique for efficiency improvement of single-stage three-level resonant AC/DC converters

The use of single-stage power-factor-corrected (SSPFC) three-level resonant ac/dc converters solves many problems that present SSPFC converters face today, namely, high component stresses, high circulating currents, and low efficiency. This makes single-stage three-level resonant ac/dc converters a good candidate for high-power applications. These converters provide the flexibility of simultaneously using two control variables. They can operate with a combined variable-frequency and asymmetrical pulsewidth modulation or with a combined variable-frequency phase-shift modulation. This provides good regulation of the output voltage, dc-bus voltage, and input current. The drawback of these methods is that the efficiency of the converter drops as the load is reduced because the converter starts to drift away from its resonance frequency, thus leading to more circulating currents and conduction losses. Therefore, a load-adaptive energy storage technique is proposed in this paper to guarantee the converter operation near its maximum efficiency point for a wide range of loading. This leads to almost constant converter efficiency from full load to 40% load. The use of interleaved converters is also proposed to extend the constant efficiency range of operation to lighter loads (15%-20% of full load). Analytical simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the proposed methods.