Comparison of Traditional Inverters and $Z$-Source Inverter for Fuel Cell Vehicles

In this paper, three different inverters: conventional pulsewidth modulation (PWM) inverter, dc-dc boosted PWM inverter, and <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Z</i> -source inverter were investigated and compared for fuel cell vehicle application. Total switching device power, passive components requirement, and constant power speed ratio of each of these inverters were calculated. For purposes of comparison, an example of the total switching device power, requirement of passive components, the constant power speed ratio, and the efficiencies of the different inverters for fuel cell vehicle powered by the same fuel cell were conducted. The comparisons show that the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Z</i> -source inverter is very promising in applications when the boost ratio is low (1-2).