Background
With growing environmentally friendly energy consumption and increasing efficiency needs, there is an increasing need for distributed versatile energy management systems. For cutting-edge applications such as electric-vehicle power train, space station power supplies, microgrids, or wherever multiple energy resources and/or loads are connected together to efficiently support the power system, a single-stage multi-port power electronic converter with omni-directional power flow capability is desirable. By using this type of converter, the size, cost, volume, and control complexity of the power conversion system can be drastically reduced due to lower component count and simpler centralized control.
Invention Description
Researchers at Arizona State University have developed multi-winding magnetic component (such as transformer) topologies and their design optimization methodologies that can achieve leakage integration in a controlled manner. This technology can attain lowest total magnetic losses including core and copper losses in any multi-port power electronics systems. The magnetic design configurations are extendable to realize an N-port multi-winding transformer with or without leakage inductance integration, that interfaces different voltage levels (high-voltage and/or low-voltage) with galvanic isolation.
Potential Applications:
- Electric vehicle charging
- Distributed renewable energy sources
- Space power supplies
- Futuristic DC and AC microgrids
Benefits and Advantages:
- Multi-winding transformer design optimization with controllable integrated leakage and minimized AC resistance that is not present in other existing technologies
- High overall efficiency and power density of the multi-port power converter
- High power density with optimized sum of core and copper loss of the magnetic components with desired leakage inductance matrix in a multiport power electronic system with any port voltage range