Executive Summary : | Conventional vehicles use petroleum as the only energy source and represent most of the existing on-road vehicles worldwide today. These vehicles emit greenhouse gasses, and therefore it is harder to satisfy the environmental regulations. India is one of the largest car markets globally, and for the reasons mentioned above, it is moving towards Electric Vehicles (EV). Out of some research challenges, developing a proper EV charging infrastructure is a primary area. Creating a high-performance yet very convenient and safe EV charging system is essential, attracting customers and switching from conventional vehicles to EVs on a large scale. Typically, EV carries a battery pack that has poor energy density and requires a long charging time. Moreover, the problem with EV's conductive charging is that it requires heavy gauge cables to connect to EV, which are difficult to handle, have tripping hazards, and are prone to vandalism. Recent progress on Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) technology shows potential to eliminate most of these EV challenges. In this project, a WPT charger will be studied for the application of EV. There are broadly two types of WPT technology available-1) Static or stationary and 2) Dynamic, i.e., charging while the vehicle is in motion. Considering the practicality, a Static charger will be considered in this work, which will comply the international standers like the Society of Automotive SAE J2954. The novelty of the proposed system will be: 1) Compact: this will be achieved with a Single-Stage Power Conversion topology instead of a multi-stage conversion. 2) Robust: Due to its automatic charging process and elimination of charging cable and metallic contact, WPT system is very reliable. Moreover, WPT is unaffected by rain, snow, dirt, chemical, or weather because the charging system is completely insulated. This project focuses on improving the converter and control to make it more reliable and tolerant to vehicle parking misalignments. 3) Cost-effective: WPT coils are much larger than the conventional concentric winding transformers. Therefore, it will be costlier than conductive charging. In this project, the single-stage power conversion architecture will help to mitigate this additional cost. To verify different performance parameters, an actual WPT charger will be developed in compliance with SAE J2954 standers. The power level will be 4kW which falls in the category of WPT level-2 of the SAE standard. The operating frequency will be 85kHz, and the input is a regular line frequency grid. The experimental prototype will be tested with an actual 72V lithium-ion battery pack. |