Effective voltage balance control for three-level bidirectional DC-DC converter based electric vehicle fast charger

Abstract

This paper proposes an effective voltage balance control (VBC) together with a new modulation technique for a high-power bidirectional three-level dc-dc converter based fast charger. The proposed VBC method can assist charging stations in balancing the dc-bus voltages so that additional balancing circuits are eliminated, leading to improved system efficiency. Meanwhile the proposed modulation method is not only intuitive to be implemented, but also have merits of reduced switching frequency, resulting in lower switching losses. The modulation principle is formulated, and its effective combination with the voltage balance control are analysed in detail. Based on which, the overall control scheme for the charging system is proposed. Simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.