This paper presents the comparison of various current control strategies employed for an interleaved power factor correction (PFC) boost converter for improving the power quality. The major control strategies discussed in this paper are: peak current control, average current control, hysteresis control, borderline current control and non-linear control. These strategies are implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the performance of the proposed converter is compared under open loop and closed loop operation. From the results, the input current waveform was close to input voltage waveform implying improved power factor and reduced total harmonic distortion for nonlinear current control technique. Experimental results validate the proposed method.

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With the increased trends of industrialization and global economic growth leading to the everchanging petrol prices and other price hikes, private transport system has become a costly affair. All these problems can be addressed with innovation. One of the most feasible solutions is turning towards renewable energies to solve the issues i.e., increasing the use of renewable energies like solar power in the place of fossil fuels. Everyone’s dream of owning a commercially viable solar vehicle is slowly becoming a reality. Electric vehicles are now available at an affordable price. This opportunity is taken towards the design of a Solar powered two-wheeler. Designing a solar vehicle is a multidisciplinary subject that covers the broad and complex aspects from various subjects. In the designed vehicle, solar panel is used as the power source and developed voltage, stored in the battery, is used to the drive the permanent magnet DC motor which drives the rear wheel of the vehicle.

By employing the power factor corrected circuits the supply current will tend to follow the supply voltage. Hence both are in phase with each other. Single-stage interleaved AC–DC converter with ripple steering technique is proposed in this paper to reduce line current harmonics and to improve the supply power factor. Interleaved Boost Converter (IBC) topology with ripple steering technique is analysed here. The proposed IBC with ripple steering is simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the performance parameters such as supply Harmonics, Power Factor (PF) and Distortion Factor (DF) are computed and compared with conventional topology. Experimental results show the advantages and flexibilities of the proposed method.