A new DC-DC converter technology suitable to support grid connection of wave power energy converter

Abstract: Since 2002, the department of electricity at Uppsala university has pushed the Lysekil project. The project has a number of wave energy converters installed in the sea southwest of Lysekil. The purpose of this work is to design, build and test a DC-DC converter, which will later be used as a necessary part of the grid connection of a wave energy converter. Since a wave energy converter does not generate electricity at a constant frequency, it is not possible to use a gearbox. Instead, power is rectified and, if there are several wave power energy converters, are put together with the others before it is inverted and transformed to the correct voltage level, and finally connected to the grid [1]. The designed DC-DC converter is a converter of the type "inverting buck-boost", i.e. a converter that can both lower and raise the voltage, and inverts the polarity of the output. Although the voltage in normal circumstances will only be increased, the simulations showed that the efficiency and cost of components did not differ much between a "boost" and "buck-boost" converter, thus considered flexibility to be able to lower the voltage if needed. The project also includes a small part to the construction of a bridge rectifier, but as the most difficult moment in the project is the DC-DC converter, the greatest focus will be there.