High Efficiency Converters Based on Modular Partial Power Processing for Fully Electric Maritime Applications

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach for analyzing the benefits that partial-power-processing-based converters can bring to fully electric maritime applications. With the aim of making the system modular and scalable to different powers/energies, series-connected partial power converters are proposed. Serializing these converters entails significant overvoltage issues, and this paper tackles them for one series-connected module failure case. A reliability analysis has been carried out considering that the components of the battery system follow an independent and identical distribution in terms of failure probability. Furthermore, a redundancy factor has been added to allow a certain failure rate in what is known as a fault-tolerant system. Finally, to demonstrate the high efficiency of partial power converters, a 3 kW prototype is tested at different working points that model the charging process of a battery. The experimental results show a peak efficiency of 99.36%.