Electrical Vehicle Battery Charger Based on Smart Microgrid

Abstract

The need to reduce pollution and the shortage of fossil fuels has led to the increased development of hybrid and full electric vehicles. There is also increased development and an increased use of renewable energy resources such as photovoltaic, wind, tidal, etc. These two trends pose serious challenges to the existing grids: a lack of supply power when the demand is high, deficient management of excess power, an increased number off grid faults, grid instabilities and others. One way to increase the penetration of electric vehicles (EV) into the market and to keep the existing grid infrastructure is to combine renewable energy resources with the grid and local battery packs to make EV charging stations. This paper focuses on developing such an EV charging station. The main advantages of the proposed EV charger include the fact that it uses only off-the-shelf inverters, and it is intended to be used in households where the maximum installed power is 3.6 kW to enable fast-charging operation modes or to reduce the costs of energy while charging the EV battery; it can reduce the energy demand from the grid during peak power consumption; it has the potential to lower electrical energy costs; it offers the possibility of vehicle-to-home (V2H) implementation; it is modular (if other technologies become available and more affordable, the consumers can easily update the system, adding more power or adding other types of renewable resources).