Charging electric vehicles (EVs) from photovoltaic panels (PV) provides a sustainable future for transportation. This paper presents the development of a 10kW EV charger that can be powered from both a PV array and the three phase AC grid. The goal is to realize a high power density and high-efficiency three-port power converter that integrates the EV, PV, grid and meets the Chademo and CCS/Combo EV charging standards. The EV port is designed to be isolated and bidirectional, so that both charging and vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) can be implemented. As PV and EV are both DC by nature, the converter uses a central DC-link to exchange power between the EV and PV, thereby increasing efficiency. The use of silicon carbide devices and powdered alloy core inductors enables high switching frequency and power density. A stable closed loop control allows four different power flows: PV- EV, EV-grid, grid-EV and PV-grid. Hence the converter operates as a PV inverter, a bidirectional EV charger and a combination of both. A 10kW prototype has been successfully tested and its experimental waveforms and measured efficiency are presented. It has three times the power density and higher partial and peak load efficiency when compared to existing solutions.@en

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) inverters have a dc/dc converter connected to the PV for executing the maximum power point tracking. The design of an interleaved boost converter (IBC) with three switching legs for a 10-kW PV inverter is presented in this paper. This paper shows how the use of silicon carbide (SiC) switches and powdered iron core inductors enables the operation of the converter at a higher switching frequency and when increasing the converter power density. The IBC is designed using a 1.2-kV SiC MOSFET and Schottky diodes and Kool Mμ powdered iron inductors. The design is compared with an IBC built with a silicon (Si) IGBT, fast recovery Si diodes, and ferrite cores. The use of SiC devices reduces the switching loses drastically and there are no reverse recovery losses, resulting in improved efficiency. The higher frequency and higher saturation flux density of the powdered iron core enable the reduction in core size by three times. A 10-kW prototype is built and tested for both the Si and SiC designs and compared with theoretical estimations.@en

Magnetic cores like powdered iron cores have a variable permeability, which is dependent on the magnetic motive force of the inductor windings. When inductors are designed using such materials, the inductance varies as a function of the inductor current. This causes a non-linear current to flow through the inductor. In this paper, mathematical derivation of the inductancecurrent relationship is derived for such inductors. The model is applied for a KoolMmu(r) powdered iron core and the results are verified experimentally using an interleaved boost converter.@en