High-Gain Non-isolated Single-Switch DC-DC Converters in Power Factor Correction Rectifiers: A Performance Assessment

Conventional single-stage Power Factor Correction (PFC) rectifiers struggle with extreme duty ratio operation for low-voltage applications, like Low-speed Electric Vehicles (LSEV). This worsens the performance of the converter and degrades the operation with time. High-gain single-switch PFC rectifiers offer better performance in terms of the duty ratio, reduced size and cost due to single-stage operation, and increasing the power density, all while meeting the required standards and regulations. This paper presents a performance assessment of PFC for AC-DC rectifiers using various high-gain single-switch DC-DC converters for LSEVs, where the battery’s voltage is 48V. Particularly, conventional SEPIC, quadratic SEPIC, quadratic Buck, and B5 converters are compared. MATLAB/Simulink software tool was used for the validity of performance assessments. The performance of the converters assesses the converters’ gain, stresses, component count, and overall cost. Results show that the B5 converter has the best behavior in terms of these specifications.