Plural stages switching capacitor converter

A power converter comprising:

• one or more switch blocks each having:
• a plurality of switch-pairs each having two switches connected in series to each other;
• a plurality of primary nodes each interconnecting the switches in a respective switch-pair;
• and
• a plurality of secondary nodes, each switch-pair being connected in series to an adjacent switch-pair through a respective secondary node to form a serial chain of switch-pairs;
• each adjacent pair of the primary nodes connectable to a flying capacitor;
• and
• each pair of the secondary nodes connectable to one or more of the following:
• at least one of a plurality of bypass capacitors, and one or more of the switch blocks;
• the power converter further comprising:
• a low voltage side and a high voltage side, the low voltage side having a first terminal directly connected to both a first secondary node of the secondary nodes and a first terminal of a first bypass capacitor of the plurality of bypass capacitors, and a second terminal directly connected to both a second secondary node of the secondary nodes and a second terminal of the high voltage side;
• and
• the high voltage side having a first terminal directly connected to both a first terminal of a second bypass capacitor of the plurality of bypass capacitors and a third secondary node of the secondary nodes, and the second terminal directly connected to the second terminal of the low voltage side and the second secondary node of the secondary nodes;
• wherein the power converter is a bidirectional switched-capacitor (SC) converter,
• wherein one of the low voltage side and the high voltage side is configured to be connected to a power source, and the other of the low voltage side and the high voltage side is configured to be connected to a load,
• wherein the power source and the load are interchangeable to each other,
• wherein the power source and the load are directly connected to the last secondary node,
• wherein the flying capacitor is not connected to an inductor,
• wherein the power converter is absent both an input capacitor filter connected to the power source in parallel and an output capacitor filter connected to the load in parallel, and
• wherein each switch-pair has a first switch and a second switch connected in series to each other, wherein the power converter is operated in two operating states and in the two operating states, the flying capacitor is alternately in parallel with the low voltage side and the first bypass capacitor wherein timing durations of an ON state of each of the first switches are equal to one another and equal to timing durations of an ON state of each corresponding second switch of the switch-pairs.