This paper reviews the current status and implementation of battery chargers, charging power levels, and infrastructure for plug-in electric vehicles and hybrids. Charger systems are categorized into off-board and on-board types with unidirectional or bidirectional power flow. Unidirectional charging limits hardware requirements and simplifies interconnection issues. Bidirectional charging supports battery energy injection back to the grid. Typical on-board chargers restrict power because of weight, space, and cost constraints. They can be integrated with the electric drive to avoid these problems. The availability of charging infrastructure reduces on-board energy storage requirements and costs. On-board charger systems can be conductive or inductive. An off-board charger can be designed for high charging rates and is less constrained by size and weight. Level 1 (convenience), Level 2 (primary), and Level 3 (fast) power levels are discussed. Future aspects such as roadbed charging are presented. Various power level chargers and infrastructure configurations are presented, compared, and evaluated based on amount of power, charging time and location, cost, equipment, and other factors.

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Review of Battery Charger Topologies, Charging Power Levels, and Infrastructure for Plug-In Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

Solid-state switch-mode rectification converters have reached a matured level for improving power quality in terms of power-factor correction (PFC), reduced total harmonic distortion at input AC mains and precisely regulated DC output in buck, boost, buck-boost and multilevel modes with unidirectional and bidirectional power flow. This paper deals with a comprehensive review of improved power quality converters (IPQCs) configurations, control approaches, design features, selection of components, other related considerations, and their suitability and selection for specific applications. It is targeted to provide a wide spectrum on the status of IPQC technology to researchers, designers and application engineers working on switched-mode AC-DC converters. A classified list of more than 450 research publications on the state of art of IPQC is also given for a quick reference.

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A review of single-phase improved power quality AC-DC converters

A detection method for use in a primary unit of an inductive power transfer system, the primary unit being operable to transmit power wirelessly by electromagnetic induction to at least one secondary unit of the system located in proximity to the primary unit and/or to a foreign object located in said proximity, the method comprising: driving the primary unit so that in a driven state the magnitude of an electrical drive signal supplied to one or more primary coils of the primary unit changes from a first value to a second value; assessing the effect of such driving on an electrical characteristic of the primary unit; and detecting in dependence upon the assessed effect the presence of a said secondary unit and/or a foreign object located in proximity to said primary unit.

Inductive power transfer

A class of zero voltage transition (ZVT) power converters is proposed in which both the transistor and the rectifier operate with zero voltage switching and are subjected to minimum voltage and current stresses. The boost ZVT-PWM converter is used as an example to illustrate the operation of these converters. A 300 kHz, 600 W ZVT-PWM boost, DC-DC converter, and a 100 kHz, 600 W power factor correction circuit using the ZVT-PWM technique and an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) device were breadboarded to show the operation of the proposed converters. It is shown that the circuit technology greatly improves the converter performance in terms of efficiency, switching noise, and circuit reliability. >

Novel zero-voltage-transition PWM converters

Inductive power transfer (IPT) was an engineering curiosity less than 30 years ago, but, at that time, it has grown to be an important technology in a variety of applications. The paper looks at the background to IPT and how its development was based on sound engineering principles leading on to factory automation and growing to a $1 billion industry in the process. Since then applications for the technology have diversified and at the same time become more technically challenging, especially for the static and dynamic charging of electric vehicles (EVs), where IPT offers possibilities that no other technology can match. Here, systems that are ten times more powerful, more tolerant of misalignment, safer, and more efficient may be achievable, and if they are, IPT can transform our society. The challenges are significant but the technology is promising.

Inductive Power Transfer

A zero-voltage switching technique is described that utilizes a resonant transition during a short but finite switching interval. This zero-voltage resonant-transition (ZVRT) switching technique can be applied to conventional buck, boost, and buck-boost power converter topologies that operate with a constant switching frequency and use pulsewidth modulation for output control. Since frequency-dependent losses are greatly reduced in the power transistors, efficient operation at higher switching frequencies (>1 MHz) is allowed. However, conduction losses are increased because ripple currents are increased and synchronous rectification is required. Experimental results are presented for an interleaved flyback converter that operates with ZVRT switching at 1 MHz. >

Zero-voltage switching in high frequency power converters using pulse width modulation

A novel power-factor-corrected single-stage alternating current/direct current converter for inductive charging of electric vehicle batteries is introduced. The resonant converter uses the current-source characteristic of the series-parallel topology to provide power-factor correction over a wide output power range from zero to full load. Some design guidelines for this converter are outlined. An approximate small-signal model of the converter is also presented. Experimental results verify the operation of the new converter

Power-Factor-Corrected Single-Stage Inductive Charger for Electric Vehicle Batteries

This paper proposes a control algorithm for utility interactive PWM inverters to maintain a continuous, uninterrupted voltage across critical and sensitive loads in the event of a fault on the grid. The algorithm switches the inverter between voltage-controlled and current-controlled modes and can easily be implemented using a DSP.

Seamless transfer of grid-connected PWM inverters between utility-interactive and stand-alone modes

A full bridge switching power converter employs zero-voltage, resonant-transition (ZVRT) switching techniques which appreciably reduces the switching losses at high switching frequencies, (for example, 1 MHz and above), using constant frequency, pulse-width-modulation techniques. The converter is implemented using a transfer with four switching FET's coupled to the primary of the transformer and four switching FET's coupled to the output of the transformer and a control unit that supplies the constant waveforms necessary to achieve synchronization and timing required to achieve the ZVRT switching.

Full bridge power converter with multiple zero voltage resonant transition switching

An A.C. to D.C. power conditioner, which draws sinusoidal input current utilizes digital proportional-integral control to provide output voltage regulation by adjusting the gain of a current program loop. The current program loop controls the state of a power switch to force the instantaneous average current in an inductor to follow the instantaneous rectified line voltage. Variable hysteresis control provides noise immunity by increasing the ripple current in an iron-cored filter inductor when the instantaneous input voltage is high. Digital proportional-integral (PI) control provides output voltage regulation by adjusting, in discrete steps, the gain of the current program loop. A multiplying digital-to-analog converter serves as an interface between the voltage regulation loop and the current program loop. The sampling rate of the PI controller is determined by the input line frequency, which allows good transient response to be obtained. The current program loop forces the current drawn by the power conditioner to follow the input A.C. line voltage, thereby electronically emulating a resistor.

Christopher P. Henze

Papers

Zero-voltage switching in high frequency power converters using pulse width modulation

Power-Factor-Corrected Single-Stage Inductive Charger for Electric Vehicle Batteries

Seamless transfer of grid-connected PWM inverters between utility-interactive and stand-alone modes

Full bridge power converter with multiple zero voltage resonant transition switching

Digitally controlled A.C. to D.C. power conditioner