Power Factor Corrected Public Green-charging Infrastructure to Promote E-Mobility in India

What is it about?

With the growing popularity of electrified transportation across the world, there have been extensive reports of research involving Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs), Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities (EVCF) and their integration to the main electric grid, besides sustainable energy resources for powering these vehicles. This paper proffers a power factor corrected Level-1 DC public green-charging infrastructure accompanied by an integrated control, for electric Light Motor Vehicles (e-LMVs), compliant with recently formulated Indian charging standards. Power factor correction of PEV charging current, solar photo-voltaic grid integration and charging of energy storage system are achieved using control of bidirectional AC/DC converters. A firmware and user interface for multimode off-board DC charging, with Green, Fast and Semi-fast charging modes are investigated. An intelligent control for Fast charging is also presented, to reduce its pernicious impact on the grid. The simulation and hardware results verifies the prime performance objectives of improving the local power quality and renewable energy utilization with multimode charging, in Indian context. The effectiveness of the proposed infrastructure is further demonstrated by a simulated use case, where 30 PEVs were randomly charged, in various modes, at this EVCF during busy commute hours.

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Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash

Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash

Why is it important?

All modes of mechanized transport depend heavily on non-renewable fossil fuels for powering the internal combustion-engine vehicles (ICVs) or pollutant coal for steam engines, which are major contributors for air pollution and Green House Gas emissions. At the current rate of exploitation of fossil fuels and untenable environmental pollution, the future of humanity is at risk. However, a shift to electric mobility however does not ensure full independence from fossil fuels as the latter assume a major role in the generation of electricity. The former merely offsets the points of emission on a geographical location. Two main issues with electrified transportation are impact on the mains electrical power distribution system, spurred by concurrent charging of hundreds of unpredictable Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs), and the quality of power associated with the electronic-chargers, to power-up the PEV