An Integral Battery Charger with Power Factor Correction for Electric Scooter

This paper presents an integral battery charger for an electric scooter with high voltage batteries and interior-permanent-magnet motor traction drive. The battery charger is derived from the power hardware of the scooter, with the ac motor drive that operates as three-phase boost rectifier with power factor correction capability. The control of the charger is also integrated into the scooter control firmware that is implemented on a fixed-point DSP controller. Current-controlled or voltage-controlled charge modes are actuated according to the requirements of the battery management system, that is embedded into the battery pack. With respect to previous integrated chargers, the ac current is absorbed at unitary power factor with no harmonic distortion. Moreover, no additional filtering is needed since the pulsewidth modulation ripple is minimized by means of phase interleaving. The feasibility of the integral charger with different ac motors (induction motor, surface-mounted phase modulation motor) is also discussed, by means of a general model purposely developed for three-phase ac machines. The effectiveness of the proposed battery charger is experimentally demonstrated on a prototype electric scooter, equipped with two Li-ion battery packs rated 260 V, 20 A

Low Voltage Regulator Modules and Single Stage Front-end Converters

Evolution in microprocessor technology poses new challenges for supplying power to these devices. To meet demands for faster and more efficient data processing, modem microprocessors are being designed with lower voltage implementations. More devices will be packed on a single processor chip and the processors will operate at higher frequencies, exceeding 1GHz. New high-performance microprocessors may require from 40 to 80 watts of power for the CPU alone. Load current must be supplied with up to 30A/µs slew rate while keeping the output voltage within tight regulation and response time tolerances. Therefore, special power supplies and Voltage Regulator Modules (VRMs) are needed to provide lower voltage with higher current and fast response. In the part one (chapter 2,3,4) of this dissertation, several low-voltage high-current VRM technologies are proposed for future generation microprocessors and ICs. The developed VRMs with these new technologies have advantages over conventional ones in terms of efficiency, transient response and cost. In most cases, the VRMs draw currents from DC bus for which front-end converters are used as a DC source. As the use of AC/DC frond-end converters continues to increase, more distorted mains current is drawn from the line, resulting in lower power factor and high total harmonic distortion. As a branch of active Power factor correction (PFC) techniques, the single-stage technique receives particular attention because of its low cost implementation. Moreover, with continuously demands for even higher power density, switching mode power supply operating at high-frequency is required because at high switching frequency, the size and weight of circuit components can be remarkably reduced. To boost the switching frequency, the soft-switching technique was introduced to alleviate the switching losses. The part two (chapter 5,6) of the dissertation presents several topologies for this front-end application. The design considerations, simulation results and experimental verification are discussed

Low Power AC-DC and DC-DC Multilevel Converters

AC-DC power electronic converters are widely used for electrical power conversion in many industrial applications such as for telecom equipment, information technology equipment, electric vehicles, space power systems and power systems based on renewable energy resources. Conventional AC-DC converters generally have two conversion stages – an AC-DC front-end stage that operates with some sort of power factor correction to ensure good power quality at the input, and a DC-DC conversion stage that takes the DC output of the front-end converter and converts it to the desired output DC voltage. Due to the cost of having two separate and independent converters, there has been considerable research on so-called single-stage converters – converters that can simultaneously perform AC-DC and DC-DC conversion with only a single converter stage. In spite of the research that has been done on AC-DC single-stage, there is still a need for further research to improve their performance. The main focus of this thesis is on development of new and improved AC-DC single-stage converters that are based on multilevel circuit structures (topologies) and principles instead of conventional two-level ones. The development of a new DC-DC multilevel converter is a secondary focus of this thesis. In this thesis, a literature survey of state of the art AC-DC and DC-DC converters is performed and the drawbacks of previous proposed converters are reviewed. A variety of new power electronic converters including new single-phase and three-phase converters and a new DC-DC converter are then proposed. The steady-state characteristics of each new converter is determined by mathematical analysis, and, once determined, these characteristics are used to develop a procedure for the design of key converter components. The feasibility of all new converters is confirmed by experimental results obtained from proof-of-concept prototype converters. Finally, the contents of the thesis are summarized and conclusions about the effectiveness of using multilevel converter principles to improve the performance of AC-DC and DC-DC converters are made

A novel multilevel interleaved-based PFC rectifier with modular DC interfaces

As it has been recognized, mainly over the last decades, PFC rectifiers are more and more fundamental and are increasingly present in several applications in the perspective of limiting power quality problems. In line with this reality, this paper proposes a novel topology of single-phase PFC rectifier. On the AC-side, the proposed PFC rectifier operates with sinusoidal current in phase with the voltage, but, additionally, it presents these very important advantages: Multilevel voltage operation; Interleaved-based current control; Modular design, allowing to establish n DC interfaces on the DC-side. The proposed PFC rectifier is comprehensively detailed, and the validation is carried out with a configuration that allows to have two independent DC interfaces, resulting in an operation with five different voltage levels, and in a current control with a ripple with a frequency that corresponds to four times the value of the switching frequency of each switching device. The validation was carried out addressing the operation of the proposed PFC rectifier in steady-state and transient-state.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020. This work has been supported by the FCT Project newERA4GRIDs PTDC/EEI-EEE/30283/2017

Review of Electric Vehicle Charging Technologies, Configurations, and Architectures

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are projected to be one of the major contributors to energy transition in the global transportation due to their rapid expansion. The EVs will play a vital role in achieving a sustainable transportation system by reducing fossil fuel dependency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, high level of EVs integration into the distribution grid has introduced many challenges for the power grid operation, safety, and network planning due to the increase in load demand, power quality impacts and power losses. An increasing fleet of electric mobility requires the advanced charging systems to enhance charging efficiency and utility grid support. Innovative EV charging technologies are obtaining much attention in recent research studies aimed at strengthening EV adoption while providing ancillary services. Therefore, analysis of the status of EV charging technologies is significant to accelerate EV adoption with advanced control strategies to discover a remedial solution for negative grid impacts, enhance desired charging efficiency and grid support. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the current deployment of EV charging systems, international standards, charging configurations, EV battery technologies, architecture of EV charging stations, and emerging technical challenges. The charging systems require a dedicated converter topology, a control strategy and international standards for charging and grid interconnection to ensure optimum operation and enhance grid support. An overview of different charging systems in terms of onboard and off-board chargers, AC-DC and DC-DC converter topologies, and AC and DC-based charging station architectures are evaluated

A Two Phase Interleaved Boost Single Stage PFC Converter using Flying Capacitor

The equipment connected to an electricity distribution network customarily needs rectification. In order to decrease DC voltage ripple, a Single phase diode rectifier utilizes a large electrolytic capacitor which yields a non-sinusoidal line current. So power factor correction (PFC) techniques are required. The boost topology is utmostwidespread than others in PFC applications. Thus a two phase interleaved boost single-stage PFC converter using flying capacitor is proposed in this paper. Due to its interleaved structure, the proposed converter can operate with reduced input current ripple and peak switch currents.The proposed system is simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the performance parameters such as power factor (PF) and total harmonic distortion (THD) are computed

Grid Integration of DC Buildings: Standards, Requirements and Power Converter Topologies

Residential dc microgrids and nanogrids are the emerging technology that is aimed to promote the transition to energy-efficient buildings and provide simple, highly flexible integration of renewables, storages, and loads. At the same time, the mass acceptance of dc buildings is slowed down by the relative immaturity of the dc technology, lack of standardization and general awareness about its potential. Additional efforts from multiple directions are necessary to promote this technology and increase its market attractiveness. In the near-term, it is highly likely that the dc buildings will be connected to the conventional ac distribution grid by a front-end ac-dc converter that provides all the necessary protection and desired functionality. At the same time, the corresponding requirements for this converter have not been yet consolidated. To address this, present paper focuses on various aspects of the integration of dc buildings and includes analysis of related standards, directives, operational and compatibility requirements as well as classification of voltage levels. In addition, power converter configurations and modulation methods are analyzed and compared. A classification of topologies that can provide the required functionality for the application is proposed. Finally, future trends and remaining challenges pointed out to motivate new contributions to this topic

Survey on Photo-Voltaic Powered Interleaved Converter System

Renewable energy is the best solution to meet the growing demand for energy in the country. The solar energy is considered as the most promising energy by the researchers due to its abundant availability, eco-friendly nature, long lasting nature, wide range of application and above all it is a maintenance free system. The energy absorbed by the earth can satisfy 15000 times of today’s total energy demand and its hundred times more than that our conventional energy like coal and other fossil fuels. Though, there are overwhelming advantages in solar energy, It has few drawbacks as well such as its low conversion ratio, inconsistent supply of energy due to variation in the sun light, less efficiency due to ripples in the converter, time dependent and, above all, high capitation cost. These aforementioned flaws have been addressed by the researchers in order to extract maximum energy and attain hundred percentage benefits of this heavenly resource. So, this chapter presents a comprehensive investigation based on photo voltaic (PV) system requirements with the following constraints such as system efficiency, system gain, dynamic response, switching losses are investigated. The overview exhibits and identifies the requirements of a best PV power generation system