Power factor corrected level‐1 DC public green‐charging infrastructure to promote e‐mobility in India

Abstract

With the growing popularity of electrified transportation across the world, there have been extensive reports of research involving plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), electric vehicle charging facilities (EVCFs) and their integration to the main electric grid, besides sustainable energy resources for powering these vehicles. This study proffers a power factor corrected level-1 DC public green-charging infrastructure accompanied by an integrated control, for electric light motor vehicles, compliant with recently formulated Indian charging standards. Power factor correction of plug-in electric vehicle charging current, solar photo-voltaic grid integration and charging of energy storage system is achieved using control of bidirectional AC/DC converters. A firmware and user interface for multimode off-board DC charging, with green, fast and semi-fast charging modes are investigated. Intelligent control for fast charging is also presented to reduce its pernicious impact on the grid. The simulation and hardware results verify the prime performance objectives of improving the local power quality and renewable energy utilisation with multimode charging, in the Indian context. The effectiveness of the proposed infrastructure is further demonstrated by a simulated use case, where 30 PEVs are randomly charged, in various modes, at this EVCF during busy commute hours.