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Power Converters for EV Charging (EE698E)

  • Objectives:
The charging system of an electric vehicle (EV) is a crucial part of the overall EV system. This course is designed to develop the foundation for pursuing future research on the EV charging system.  The primary focus of this course is the analysis, design, modeling, and control of standard power electronic converters for the EV charger.

  • Short Summary:
The electrical subsystems of an Electric Vehicle (EV) are 1) battery charger and 2) motor drives. This course will focus on understanding different power electronic converters for EV chargers. The EV chargers can be classified in several ways based on 1) the power levels, 2) charger location- onboard or off-board, 3) isolated or non-isolated,  4) unidirectional or bidirectional, and 5) conductive or wireless-inductive. Generally, these chargers have two power conversion stages- 1) power factor corrected rectifier(PFC) for converting line-frequency AC to DC, and 2) DC-DC power conversion to charge the battery while providing galvanic isolation. The second part could either be conductive or wireless-inductive.

The first half of this course is designed to understand the individual power conversion stages of a conventional conductive charging system.  A boost-derived PFC circuit will be studied to provide a clear understanding of the PFC stage.  An isolated H-bridge converter with phase-shift control will be studied for the DC-DC power conversion stage.

The remaining half of this course will explore inductive wireless power transfer (WPT) technology for EV charging. From the Power Engineering side, WPT is relatively new, and only a limited course reference material is available till date. Therefore, all the basics of this technology will be taught first. This includes basics of resonant converter, WPT working principle, dual-side compensation, circuit design, modeling, and closed-loop control.
  • References:
Conductive charging:
1) "Fundamentals of Power Electronics", Robert W. Erickson and Dragan Maksimovic, Springer, Second Edition 2005.
2) "Power Electronics: Converters, Applications and Design",
Mohan, Undeland and Robbins, Wiley, Third Edition 2007

Wireless-inductive charging:
1) "Wireless Power Transfer for Electric Vehicles and Mobile Devices" Chris Mi, Chun T. Rim
2) "Wireless Power Transfer Using Magnetic and Electric Resonance Coupling Techniques" Takehiro Imura
3) "Pulse-width Modulated DC-DC Power Converters"   Marian K. Kazimierczuk
4)
Current literature