Electric vehicle battery charger for smart grids

This paper presents a smart grid compatible electric vehicle on-board battery charger. Based on a novel control strategy, the charging equipment can operate bi-directionally, demanding or injecting a balanced and sinusoidal with no harmonics current into the grid, regardless of the grid voltage quality, minimizing the losses in the power flow. The control strategy of the charger tries to fulfill the recent IEEE Standard 1459-2010, with the objective of maximizing the use/injection of AC power from/into the grid, and reducing the load harmonic factor and load unbalanced factor. Simulation and experimental results are included to test the charger under different source voltage conditions.

► A bi-directional battery charger is proposed.
► A novel control strategy is applied to a simple topology.
► A sinusoidal current is injected and demanded from the grid regardless of the grid voltage distortion.
► Simulation and experimental results validate the novel control strategy.