Small-Signal Stability Assessment and Active Stabilization of a Bidirectional Battery Charger

Abstract

A two-stage electric vehicle (EV) battery charger typically consists of an ac–dc converter cascaded with a dc–dc converter. In such a cascaded system, maintaining stability at the intermediate dc link is imperative for reliable operation of the battery charger under different operating modes. This paper addresses the intermediate dc-link stability challenges that exist in a bidirectional two-stage grid connected single-phase battery charger. It is delineated that the small-signal load-dependent resistance of the ac–dc converter plays a crucial role in determining the stability of the bidirectional battery charger. A virtual-resistor-based active damping control strategy that does not require any additional sensors is explored for the ac–dc converter to stabilize the cascaded system under all operating modes irrespective of the power flow direction. Experimental results on a grid-connected single-phase battery charger hardware prototype are presented to validate the proposed models and showcase the improvement in the dc-link stability due to the virtual-resistance-based active damping approach.