Solar Photovoltaic Fed Fast Charging Power Converters for Electric Vehicles

Transportation electrification is much needed as it can help to reduce the consumption of petroleum fuels. At the same time importance of the charging system to energize electric vehicles is also growing. Currently AC level 1 charging (120V, <2KW) and AC level 2 Charging (240V, <10KW) are used to charge the electric vehicle in residential and workplaces. The off-board chargers have significance as they can charge the vehicles in less time like gas/petrol stations. These off-board charging stations are comprised of two power conversion stages. One is for the rectification process along with power factor correction to obtain DC output from the input utility grid and DC/DC stage to get the regulated DC voltage from the rectifier output. One can reduce the charging time by increasing the output charging power at the power conversion stage. Hence, the present work deals with a novel DC-DC converter topology for fast charging applications and the novelty lies in the Electric vehicle charging system with a reduced number of switches along with a modified voltage lift switched inductor to get more output power. The proposed converter is tested through the simulation and validated through the hardware prototype. The increase in voltage gain conversion validation recommends the proposed converter to solar PV array driven battery charging applications and is well suitable for Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and Grid to Vehicle (G2V) applications.