Bridging renewable energy sources with non-isolated DC-DC converters: challenges and innovations

In recent years, the world is focusing on replacing the conventional sources for energy generation from renewable sources. Increasing population is accelerating the power demand which is becoming challenging to meet up this demand over the globe. Consumption of fossil fuels for power generation is posing a threat to the environment by changing climate and increasing the global temperature. Now a days, researchers are finding out alternative methods for power generation by utilizing renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. The use of traditional basic voltage divider circuits, including rheostats and potential dividers, is eliminated by power electronic-based DC–DC converters. For increasing the efficiency and consistency of energy-generating power plants non isolated DC-DC converters are being employed. High fluctuations in voltages are regulated by DC-DC converters for enhancing the performance of the power systems. Selection of appropriate DC-DC converters topology and controllers is significant for conducting operations in the power generation systems. Various research has been conducted on non-isolated DC-DC converters such as buck-boost, sepic, zeta, cuk, and hybrid DC-DC converters for analysing their respective performance with the help of outcomes from MATLAB Simulink. In this review, applications of non-isolated DC-DC converters in power generation systems utilizing various renewable sources of energy are discussed. This review also identifies the prevailing research gaps, current trends, and problems.