System Architecture of a Modular Direct-DC PV Charging Station for Plug-in Electric Vehicles

Christopher Hamilton, Gustavo Gamboa, John Elmes, Ross Kerley, Andres Arias, Michael Pepper, John Shen, and Issa Batarseh
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida 32816 Email: chamilton@knights.ucf.edu

Abstract Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are an emerging technology in the market and are helping to offset the negative effects of existing transportation methods that primarily rely on fossil fuel sources. As PHEVs are being introduced into the market, renewable energy sources such as solar power are taking a larger part in the energy sector. A need for high efciency battery charging is required to decrease the amount of time it takes to charge these cars in order for them to become a viable means of transportation. A novel solar carport architecture is proposed that will provide a three port interface to PHEVs, solar panels and the utility grid to create a seamless power ow between the three ports. Current battery chargers rely heavily on AC/DC conversion from the grid to the car battery, however a direct DC/DC interface is made in this solar carport thus increasing the overall efciency. This paper will prove this concept and show the improved performance over available battery charging schemes.

1). A unique control strategy is implemented, allowing efcient energy transfer while reducing the conversion stages between the source and load. The system is designed to be modular to improve exibility and allow for ease of expansion. In the proposed system, a single modular system will provide charging for two parking spaces.

I. I NTRODUCTION In recent years, the improvement in battery technology has allowed car manufacturers to design more affordable plug-in electric vehicles. The wide use of electric vehicles can cause a signicant increase in the power load, especially at peak hours, in local areas. Also, nonlinear charging loads can caused high harmonics and poor power factor which can signicantly affect the local utility company as well. The implementation of a PV charging station for plug in electric vehicles has been an attractive technology since it can optimize the power consumption at peak hours. Several solar charging stations have been constructed in [2][4][5][6] with the intent to offset the load requirements at peak hours. However, they are based primarily on simulation and/or fail to compare the overall efciency. This paper proposes a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) solar carport charging station concept featuring a multi-port power electronic interface among photovoltaic modules, PHEVs, and the power grid (shown in gure

Fig. 1.

System overview of the proposed multi-port solar carport

The specications of each DC/DC converter module will be provided based on design criteria for the topologies. Preliminary experimental results will also be presented in this paper showing the efciency from PV to car battery. These results will compare the current technology of today based on a DC/AC-AC/DC conversion scheme with our proposed DC/DC conversion process. These results will prove the concept of direct DC/DC car battery charging. II. S YSTEM OVERVIEW Each module consists of four strings of six PV panels. In this research, the rated power for each of the PV panel is 200W, thus making the overall power of 1.2 kW per

978-1-4244-5226-2/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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PV string. In normal MPPT operation, the input voltage the DC/DC converter will see from the panels is 330V350V as they were experimentally veried later in this paper. However, the total open voltage can reach up to 448V per string. Each station also consists of two 4 kW DC/DC converters for battery charging, one converter per parking space. Figure 2 illustrates a quick overview of the proposed modular system for each charging station. Note the DC/DC charger for the vehicles may eventually be integrated within each vehicle (on-board). Finally, the multi-port solar charging station incorporates a bidirectional converter as the mediator of the module and the grid.

The equivalent DC resistance of the inductor for the charger DC/DC converter was measured to be approximately 2.64m. Similarly, the DC inductor resistance for the solar DC/DC converter is approximately 81.6m mainly because it contains 72 turns as opposed to the charger inductor where it only has 10 turns around the core. The equivalent resistance of these two inductors under different frequencies is shown in Table III. Frequency DC 10kHz 20kHz 40kHz 80kHz 100kHz 120kHz 140kHz 160kHz Rcharger 2.64 m 16.5 m 4.25 m 130 m 450 m 600 m 955 m 1.28 1.64 Rsolar 81.6 m 15 m 25 m 54 m 1.5 2.3 3.2 4.4 5.6

TABLE II E QUIVALENT RESISTANCE UNDER DIFFERENT UNDER DIFFERENT

FREQUENCIES FOR THE MAIN INDUCTORS

Fig. 2.

Block diagram of the proposed multi-port solar carport

The second phase of the research will include the design of a bidirectional DC/AC converter. This bidirectional converter will provide the excess power from the PV arrays to the grid. This condition is met when the PV power is greater than then load power. However, if the PV panels are not providing enough power to charge the batteries, the control structure of the bidirectional DC/AC converter senses the decrease in bus voltage and supplies the extra power needed by the vehicle batteries. The proposed control algorithm for the multi-port solar charging system between photovoltaic modules, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and the power grid is shown in gure 2. III. T OPOLOGY I MPLEMENTATION Each converter charger and solar DC/DC converter implemented in this research consists of a synchronous buck DC/DC converter and the designed values for the main power components are shown in Table III. Component L Cin Cout Charger 47H 1060F 600F Solar 650H 300F 1000F

In order to better understand the results obtained during testing, it is important to know the range of inductance under different current conditions. Figure 3 shows that our inductor will remain between 45H [max load] to 50H [no load]; where the maximum load is at 30A per indictor.

Fig. 3.

Charger inductance under different current conditions

TABLE I M AIN COMPONENT VALUES FOR THE CHARGER AND SOLAR DC/DC BUCK CONVERTER

Similarly, the main inductor for the solar DC/DC converter was measured under different current conditions. Figure 4 shows that the inductance will vary from 640H [max load]-735H [no load]. Unlike the charger, the maximum current rating for this inductor was designed to be 6A. To reduce switching losses, Zero-Voltage Transition (ZVT) Pulse-Width-Modulated (PWM) is implemented. As explained in [3], this technique implements an auxiliary circuit in parallel with the main power path.

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For the nal paper, these values will be optimized in order to increase efciency. Component Lr Cr Dr Value 4.7H 4.3nF 60A Note Irms =20A Isat =59A 400Vmax 600Vmax

TABLE IV M AIN COMPONENT VALUES FOR THE SOLAR DC/DC BUCK Fig. 4. Charger inductance under different current conditions
CONVERTER

Several soft switching techniques are used in the industry, however, a comparison was made in [1] where ZVTPWM appeared to be the most desirable since it combines advantages of both PWM and resonant soft switching techniques. In Figure 5, a generalized ZVT-PWM switching cell is shown. This cell includes the main power switches (S1 and S2 assuming ideal case) with an auxiliary switch, Sr , the auxiliary diode, Dr , the resonant inductor, Lr , and the resonant capacitor, Cr .

The modes of operation for ZVT are illustrated in Figure 6. The nal paper will include a more detailed experimental results that conrms ZVT operation.

Fig. 6. Fig. 5. ZVT-PWM implementation for the Buck DC/DC converters

Seven modes for the ZVT-PWM implementation

The designed values for the charger to achieve ZVT along with their rated values is summarized in Table III. Component Lr Cr Dr Value 3.3H 4.9nF 60A Note Irms =60A Isat =84A 400Vmax 600Vmax

IV. E FFICIENCY R ESULTS The proposed research has undergone some preliminary efciency testing to test the power handling capability of the individual converters as well as the overall efciency of the solar carport system. The solar and charger simulations in PSPICE showed yielded 90% efciency when operating without soft-switching and because of the power level, a soft switching technique was researched and selected as shown in section II. Simulation results with the ZVT topology yielded an efciency increase of about 5% which is a suitable specication for the PHEV system. The results shown below are for the case of ZVT soft-switching.

TABLE III M AIN COMPONENT VALUES FOR THE CHARGER DC/DC BUCK
CONVERTER

Likewise, the designed values for the solar DC/DC converter to achieve ZVT is summarized in Table III.

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A. Solar Power Stage Testing The solar power stage showed promising results for initial testing and when compared with results obtained from the solar panels, the solar converters will be operating at high efciency most of the day due to the power level distribution during this time. A grid-tied inverter measured and recorded the power delivered to the grid from the panels during a 7 hour window starting at 7:30 AM and ending at 2:30 PM. The results from this test are shown below in gure 7.

efciency levels for most of the day. It should also be noted that minimal part and layout optimization has been done and that better results will be extracted over the next few months. B. Series Connected Power Stage Results Testing was also done on the efciency from the solar panels to the battery output, which was selected to be 72 V based on common battery voltages in neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV). The output voltage in the nal system will be selected based on the type of car that is plugged into the carport. The results in gure 9 show that the solar panel-to-battery efciency remains close to 90%. The efciency test was only up to 1.2 kW because of the rated power of the solar DC/DC converter, however a thermal camera showed very little heat dissipation on the parts and the layout and so we feel comfortable with the power handling capability of the prototype. Notice that preliminary results show that the proposed architecture yields a signicant increase in efciency when compared with a typical setup. In this research, a typical setup is dened as a DC/AC/DC power transfer before it gets to the vehicle battery. The converters are currently being optimized and the nal paper will include a more detailed experimental results that can better illustrate the advantages of the proposed architecture.

Fig. 7. Power vs. Time: Power delivered to the grid during morning and mid-afternoon

The results represent 4 strings of 1.2 kW solar panel units, each of which is to be controlled by a separate 1.2 kW solar power stage operating with MPPT. The results for the solar power stage testing were obtained during closed loop operation with only an OVR controller regulating the output voltage so that efciency results could easily be measured. These results are shown in gure 8.

Fig. 8. Efciency curve of the solar DC/DC converter operating in output voltage regulation

Fig. 9. Efciency curve of the solar DC/DC converter cascaded with the charger DC/DC converter (Dash line: typical setup; Solid line: proposed setup

The results shown in gure 8 were taken with the following: Vin = 330V Vout = 210V fsw = 50kHz Comparing the results of the solar power stage and the inverter power draw, it can easily be shown that since the solar converter operates above 93% efciency at more than half the rated power and that the panels yield more than half the rated power from 8:30 AM until the end of the recorded data, the solar converter operates at high

V. S UMMARY A PHEV solar carport station architecture is proposed in this paper. This architecture along wiht a unique control algorithm structure eliminates extra conversion steps which increases overall power transfer efciency from the PV arrays to the vehicle battery pack. The control structure mentioned in section II shows how a modular system can be made by always monitoring the bus voltage. The system described allows all PHEVs connected to the solar charging station for plug-in electric vehiles to have an equal amount of power if power

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available from the charging station is limited. In addition, the solar DC/DC converters behave the same way by always evenly sharing the power distribution to the carport. Because the system is modular, it can easily be expanded thus making the station more affordable and efcient. The PV charging station where the proposed algorithm will be implemented has been completed and it is shown in Figure 11. Because the solar DC/DC converters always have the same output, the prototype shown in Figure 10 includes two of the 1.2 kW DC/DC converter with a common output (bus). This yields an overall power of 2.4 kW per enclosure. The nal paper will include experimental results of the proposed system architecture with an optimized ZVT-PWM implememtation. Also, a more detailed efciency comparison between DC/AC/DC charging versus our modular system using the same PV charging station will be discussed.

R EFERENCES
[1] Guichao Hua and F.C. Lee. Soft-switching techniques in pwm converters. In Industrial Electronics, Control, and Instrumentation, 1993. Proceedings of the IECON 93., International Conference on, pages 637 643 vol.2, nov 1993. [2] J.G. Ingersoll and C.A. Perkins. The 2.1 kw photovoltaic electric vehicle charging station in the city of santa monica, california. In Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1996., Conference Record of the Twenty Fifth IEEE, pages 1509 1512, may 1996. [3] M.Ld.S. Martins, J.L. Russi, and H.L. Hey. Novel design methodology and comparative analysis for zvt pwm converters with resonant auxiliary circuit. Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on, 42(3):779 796, may-june 2006. [4] D.M. Robalino, G. Kumar, L.O. Uzoechi, U.C. Chukwu, and S.M. Mahajan. Design of a docking station for solar charged electric and fuel cell vehicles. In Clean Electrical Power, 2009 International Conference on, pages 655 660, june 2009. [5] T. Winkler, P. Komarnicki, G. Mueller, G. Heideck, M. Heuer, and Z.A. Styczynski. Electric vehicle charging stations in magdeburg. In Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference, 2009. VPPC 09. IEEE, pages 60 65, sept. 2009. [6] Zhang Yu, Minghong Zhang, and Jianning Yang. Design of energy management systems for mobile power station of electric vehicles. In Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering, 2009 International Conference on, volume 4, pages 250 253, dec. 2009.

Fig. 10. Enclosed rst prototype for the solar DC/DC converter (2.4 kW total power)

Fig. 11. PHEV carport charging station where the algorithm will be implemented

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