In this chapter, various electric vehicle (EV) charging technologies are reviewed, including onboard charging, offboard charging, and contactless charging. The focus is on charging power control as well as its converter topology. Because EV charging significantly influences the grid, the power quality of EV charging is thoroughly reviewed in terms of modeling, analysis, and mitigation measures. EV charging, especially overnight, gives a lot of flexibility to instant charging power, which can be used to improve the load flow in the electric grid. Smart charging describes those approaches, which are also reviewed.

The lithium-ion battery of an electric vehicle (EV) is typically rated at either 400 or 800 V. When considering public parking infrastructures, EV wireless chargers must efficiently deliver electric power to both battery options. This can be normally achieved by regulating the output voltage through a dc-dc converter at the cost of higher onboard circuit complexity and lower overall efficiency. This article proposes a wireless charging system that maintains a high power transfer efficiency when charging EVs with either 400- or 800-V nominal battery voltage at the same power level. The control scheme is implemented at the power source side, and only passive semiconductor devices are employed on board the EV. The presented system, called voltage/current doubler (V/I-D), comprises two sets of series-compensated coupled coils, each of them connected to a dedicated H-bridge converter. The equivalent circuit has been analyzed while explaining the parameters' selection. The analytical power transfer efficiency has been compared to the one resulting from the conventional one-to-one coil system at 7.2 kW. For the same power level, the dc-to-dc efficiency of 97.11% and 97.52% have been measured at 400-V and 800-V voltage output, respectively. Finally, the functionality of the V/I-D converter has been proved at both the even and uneven misalignments of the two sets of coupled coils.

This article presents a parameter recognition-based impedance tuning method for the impedance mismatch caused by capacitance drift and coil misalignment in series-series-compensated wireless power transfer (WPT) systems. First, a parameter recognition method is proposed to identify the unknown parameters of the resonant circuits by only measuring the rms values of the coil currents. No phase detection circuits and auxiliary measurement coils are required. Furthermore, according to the recognized parameters, the reactance on both sides are minimized simultaneously by regulating the system frequency and the phase shift angles of the active rectifier. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed parameter recognition method adopts a dynamic frequency approaching strategy to avoid severe system detuning due to the bifurcation phenomenon. Moreover, based on the recognized parameters, the proposed impedance tuning method can simultaneously cope with the parameter deviations caused by capacitance drift and coil misalignment on both sides without using extra circuits and switches. Experimental results show that the unknown parameters of the resonant circuits are recognized accurately, with the average relative errors all less than 3%. Additionally, by implementing the impedance tuning method, the dc to dc efficiency of the WPT prototype is improved by 4.3%-15% in the experiments.

Light-duty electric vehicles (EVs) typically have a rated voltage of either 400 or 800 V. Especially when considering public parking infrastructures or owners with multiple EVs, e.g., car rental companies, EV wireless chargers must efficiently deliver electric power to both battery options. For this purpose, this article proposes an advanced and compact version of the previously defined voltage/current doubler (V/I-D) converter, here comprising two coupled series-compensated bipolar pads (BPPs). The presented system can efficiently charge EVs with both battery voltage classes at the same power level without affecting the current rating of the converter's circuit components. The control scheme is implemented at the power source side in terms of switching frequency and input voltage, and only passive semiconductor devices are employed on board the EV. The equivalent circuit is analyzed, focusing on the BPPs' undesired cross-coupling and its effect on the power transfer. Methods to compensate for the cross-coupling are proposed regarding the BPP design and operating strategy. At 7.2 kW and aligned BPPs, the dc-to-dc efficiency of 96.34% and 96.53% have been measured at 400 and 800 V, respectively. The proposed method has been experimentally validated at different misalignment profiles while considering battery voltages 300-400 V and 600-800 V, which proves that the V/I -D converter is a universal charging solution for EV batteries.

Due to the urgent desire for a fast, convenient, and efficient battery charging technology for electric vehicle (EV) users, extensive research has been conducted into the design of high-power inductive power transfer (IPT) systems. However, there are few studies that formulate the design as a multiobjective optimization (MOO) research question considering both the aligned and misaligned performances and validate the optimal results in a full-scale prototype. This article presents a comprehensive MOO design guideline for highly efficient IPT systems and demonstrates it by a highly efficient 20-kW IPT system with the dc-dc efficiency of 97.2% at the aligned condition and 94.1% at 150-mm lateral misalignment. This achievement is a leading power conversion efficiency metric compared to IPT EV charging systems disseminated in today's literature. Herein, a general analytical method is proposed to compare the performances of different compensation circuits in terms of the maximum efficiency, voltage/current stresses, and misalignment tolerance. An MOO method is proposed to find the optimal design of the charging pads, taking the aligned/misaligned efficiency and area/gravimetric power density as the objectives. Finally, a prototype is built according to the MOO results. The charging pad dimension and total weight, including the housing material, are 516∗552∗60 mm3/25 kg for the transmitter and 514∗562∗60 mm3/21 kg for the receiver. Correspondingly, the gravimetric, volumetric, and area power density are 0.435 kW/kg, 581 kW/m3, and 69.1 kW/m2, respectively. The measured efficiency agrees with the anticipated value derived from the given analytical models.

Wireless charging must be highly efficient throughout the entire battery charging profile to compete in the electric vehicle (EV) industry. Thus, optimum load matching is commonly used: it operates at the equivalent load that maximizes the efficiency, which depends on the coil's alignment. In this article, the optimum load is made independent of the coils' position by changing the system's resonant frequency through switch-controlled capacitors (SCCs). This eliminates the need for load-side voltage control. The output current follows the battery voltage rise during the battery charging cycle to always match the optimum load, which can be achieved by regulating the input voltage via the power factor correction (PFC) converter. This method is called here constant optimum load (COL). Two SCC topologies have been implemented in a 3.7-kW hardware demonstrator. The one implementing the half-wave modulation achieves higher efficiency than the one employing full-wave modulation, with 96.30% at 3.2 kW and aligned coils. When misalignment occurs, the half-wave modulation technique results in higher efficiency than the conventional-fixed compensation, where the efficiency is lower by up to 0.68% at partial load. Based on these results, the proposed COL method is proven suitable for 3.7-kW EV-static wireless charging achieving one of the highest peak efficiencies listed in today's literature for the same power class.

This paper aims to investigate the dynamic charging performance of an 11 kW dynamic inductive power transfer (DIPT) system. First, a multi-objective optimization (MOO) method is proposed to find the Pareto front of the DD charging pad. Then, the optimal design with a 96.82% efficiency is selected as the target design for the DIPT system. Based on the coupler mutual inductance at different misalignment, the orientation of the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) pads and the distance between Tx pads are studied and optimized. To obtain the dynamic characteristics of the DIPT system, the impact of mutual inductance variation is investigated, and a dynamic model using Laplace phasor transformation is built to solve the waveform amplitude of electrical variables. Finally, a time-variant circuit model is built. Based on the simulations, the dynamic model is proved to be accurate, and the proposed DIPT system displays a good dynamic charging performance.

If electric vehicles have to be truly sustainable, it is essential to charge them from sustainable sources of electricity, such as solar or wind energy. In this paper, the design of solar powered e-bike charging station that provides AC, DC and wireless charging of e-bikes is investigated. The charging station has integrated battery storage that enables for both grid-connected and off-grid operation. The DC charging uses the DC power from the photovoltaic panels directly for charging the e-bike battery without the use of an AC charging adapter. For the wireless charging, the e-bike can be charged through inductive power transfer via the bike kickstand (receiver) and a specially designed tile (transmitter) at the charging station, which provides maximum convenience to the user.

In inductive power transfer applications that use resonant compensation networks, the commonly employed H-bridge inverter should be kept operating in soft-switching to ensure high power efficiency and low irradiated electromagnetic noise. To achieve so, the zero-crossing detection circuit for the resonant current or voltage must be fast and accurate in any operating condition. This paper researches the concept of an auto-resonant control for the typical H-bridge resonant converter used in wireless charging systems. In the method proposed here, the reference levels for the zero-crossing detection of the inverter's current are automatically adapted depending on the slope of the current itself at the zero-crossing. In this way, it is possible to compensate for the circuit delay even in the presence of parameters' variation and to ensure that the soft-switching is always maintained. The functionality of this control method is proven first mathematically, and then with circuit simulations. The core steps for the implementation are described with the support of functional blocks. Finally, the system start-up strategy is explained, which uses an auxiliary timed oscillator to modulate the inverter with a fixed 50% duty cycle at a higher frequency than the nominal. This guarantees that the start-up is in the inductive region and, thus, the zero-voltage switching turn-on. Once the detection circuits sense the current flow, the oscillator is automatically disabled, and the nominal power transfer starts.

In high-power wireless battery charging that uses inductive power transfer, a considerable amount of power losses are located in the transmitter and receiver coils because they carry high resonant currents and typically have a loose coupling between them which increases eddy current losses. Therefore, the nominal operation needs to be chosen such that the coils' losses are minimized. Additionally, the inverter's semiconductors soft-switching improves both the power conversion efficiency and the electromagnetic compatibility of the system, thus it needs to be safeguarded for a wide operating range. However, depending on the chosen quality factor of the coils, it might happen that the minimum coils' losses and soft-switching are not satisfied at the same time. This paper defines a guideline on the parametric selection of the coils' quality factor such that the optimum operation of both the coils and the resonant converter can be achieved simultaneously. This parametric guideline is proposed for resonant converters implementing the four basic compensation networks: series-series, series-parallel, parallel-series, and parallel-parallel. Finally, circuit examples are provided for an 11 kW wireless battery charging system.