Nowadays, energy generation is on the path from centralized to distributed generation paradigm to improve the efficiency and resilience of power systems. One of the major developments in the energy sector was the introduction of dc microgrids that facilitate direct integration of energy sources, storage, and dc loads. Also, most consumer and industrial devices are naturally dc devices or contain a dc link, which makes them compatible with dc microgrids. Hence, dc distribution is an efficient tool for combining dc energy sources and battery energy storage with typical loads that are predominantly compatible with dc microgrids. In the foreseeable future, widespread adoption of dc microgrids will rely on the ubiquitous use of dc–dc converters. Apart from cost concerns, the long-term reliability of power electronic systems is under scrutiny by the power industry, which prefers simple but highly reliable/available solutions.
Among isolated dc–dc converter topologies, flyback and forward converters are used the most in low-power applications. These topologies are simple and, thus, cost-efficient, but they do not allow for fault-tolerance implementation. They could be overdesigned for higher reliability, but their cost would render their adoption unfeasible. Conventional (N+1 ) redundancy could be used in a limited number of mission-critical systems where the cost of implementation is a secondary issue. However, the cost of implementation and maintenance still play an essential role in most applications. Therefore, fault-tolerant (FT) dc–dc converters are becoming increasingly popular as a tool enabling a deferred after-fault maintenance of mission-critical systems [1].
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