The conventional power factor correction circuit has a fixed output voltage. However, in some applications, a PFC circuit with a wide output voltage range is needed. A single phase power factor correction circuit with wide output voltage range is developed in this work.

After a comparison of two main power stage candidates (Buck+Boost and Sepic) in terms of efficiency, complexity, cost and device rating, the buck+boost converter is employed as the variable output PFC power stage. From the loss analysis, this topology has a high efficiency from light load to heavy load.

The control system of the variable output PFC circuit is analyzed and designed. Charge average current sensing scheme has been adopted to sense the input current. The problem of high input harmonic currents at low output voltage is discussed. It is found that the current loop gain and cross over frequency will change greatly when the output voltage changes. To solve this problem, an automatic gain control scheme is proposed and a detailed circuit is designed and added to the current loop.

A modified input current sensing scheme is presented to overcome the problem of an insufficient phase margin of the PFC circuit near the maximum output voltage. The charge average current sensing circuit will be bypassed automatically by a logical circuit when the output voltage is higher than the peak line voltage. Instead, a resistor is used to sense the input current at that condition. Therefore, the phase delay caused by the charge average current sensing circuit is avoided.

The design and analysis are based on a novel air conditioner motor system application. Some detailed design issues are discussed. The experimental results show that the variable output PFC circuit has good performance in the wide output voltage range, under both the Boost mode when the output voltage is high and the Buck+Boost mode when the output voltage is low.