Phase Shedding of a Ripple-Free Stacked Interleaved Boost Converter for Fuel Cell-Based Powertrains

The necessity of lowering emissions in the transportation sector is driving growing interest in fuel cell electric vehicles. Nonetheless, these vehicles still face several challenges, such as elevated costs and concerns about reliability. This paper explores the impact of the current ripple on PEM fuel cells and presents how a straightforward converter topology can be utilized to address this issue. The study considers a stacked interleaved boost converter. The basis of this converter topology is the interleaved boost, which, with the addition of a dedicated leg, allows for the cancellation of the current ripple for every load condition. Other advantages of this topology are its modularity and the possibility of improving its efficiency at partial loads thanks to phase shedding. The objective of this work is to propose a modulation of this converter topology that maximises efficiency while maintaining ripple-free on the input current. A numerical analysis of the converter’s efficiency, simulations of trends in electrical quantities, and experimental validations are performed to investigate the behaviour of the additional leg.