Improving a battery charger architecture for electric vehicles with photovoltaic system

In this study, a two-stage battery charger architecture with high-efficiency, multi-input, and output half-bridge LLC (HBLLC) resonance converter that performs a wide load range is proposed. The first input of the HBLLC is provided by the photovoltaic (PV) panel assembly on the vehicle. A high efficiency and fast maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm has been developed for the PV panel to operate at the maximum power point. The other input is supplied by a grid-connected AC-DC bridgeless power factor correction (PFC) converter, which is controlled with the average current mode (ACM) control method. The most important feature that distinguishes the designed topology from previous studies is that it charges the low-voltage battery through the PV panel. In previous studies, the low-voltage battery was being charged via the high-voltage battery. This allowed the high-voltage battery to transfer power to the low-voltage battery even when it was not charged. However, in the proposed architecture, the low-voltage battery is fed by a PV panel. This condition allows the electric vehicle to take more miles with a single charge process. Furthermore, the proposed architecture reduces energy costs in the long term by providing some of the energy demanded from the grid. In addition, the proposed integrated battery charging circuit is intended to reduce the cost of additional cables. The system is designed as 3.1 kW power and operated under no load to full load. As for the performance of the proposed architecture, the peak efficiency of the LLC resonant converter is 95.3%. In addition, peak efficiency of the AC-DC bridgeless PFC converter is 97.3%, while the power factor is higher than 0.99, input current total harmonic distortion (THD) is less than 5%, MPPT method accuracy is higher than 99%, and output voltage ripples (Delta V) is less than 1 V.