Electric Vehicle Charging through Resonant Coupling Wireless Power Transfer

The growing awareness about sustainability and environmental concerns are accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles. They play a promising role due to their potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality and lessen reliance on fossil fuels. However, one of the primary concerns for potential buyers is the charging process and infrastructure. Traditional wired charging systems for electric vehicles face limitations such as user inconvenience, wear and tear of connectors and challenges in automation. A wireless electric vehicle charging offers more user-friendly, automated and contactless method by eliminating the need for physical connectors. However, wireless inductive charging suffers from relatively low efficiency due to higher energy losses. Whereas resonant coupling significantly improves efficiency by using electromagnetic resonance to transfer power more effectively over short distances. This paper mainly focuses on design and implementation of a resonant coupling system using series capacitance for achieving resonance, instead of a traditional frequency oscillator. This approach simplifies the circuitry and has shown promising results in maintaining high efficiency. Investigations have been carried out by aligning the transmitter and receiver coils at different distances and load conditions. In the proposal model, resonant wireless power transfer precisely tunes the transmitter and receiver coils to resonate at a shared frequency of 60 kHz, minimising inductive losses and achieving efficiencies of up to 89.74%. The findings showed the potential for resonant wireless power transfer systems to support the next generation of electric vehicle infrastructure. This paper also presents a review on various wireless electric vehicle charging approaches.