Smart Dynamic Charging of Electric Vehicles
Project description
Electrification in the transportation sector has been strongly emphasized for the last several decades due to tighter regulations triggered by environmental concerns and energy security concerns. Known as a convenient, safe, and reliable alternative option for electric vehicles (EV), inductive power transfer (IPT) has been extensively studied. The dynamic IPT (DIPT) which enables the possibility to charge EV along the route, reduce the battery size and extend range is becoming a hot topic of this research area. Since there are no standards for dynamic inductive charging established, it is still arduous to define a clear picture of the electrical parameters to be measured, and this metrological research could serve for the optimal design of DIPT.
This Ph.D. project aims to advance DIPT for EV by developing metrology techniques for measuring IPT efficiency as well as ensuring reliable demonstration of compliance with existing standards for human exposure. The effort will be paid to define the requirements for a power measurement unit for DIPT, to identify the relevant parameters and to estimate their effect on the measurement of the power transferred to the vehicle and on the system efficiency. Also, electromagnetic analysis methods will be developed to assess the human exposure of DIPT, taking compliance with the limits indicated by the guideline of the International Commission on Nonionizing Radiation Protection into account.This project will also focus on the optimization design to achieve reliable, safe, and high-efficient DIPT.
The research will go into both devices and systems level to tackle issues including compatibility with the static charging system, optimal design of charging device architecture, suitable application scenarios, foreign object effect, and grid interoperability. Dynamic charging couplers will be designed and optimized considering different safety requirements and optimization criteria. Influence of foreign objects on the performance and approaches to detect them will be studied. Study on the detection of faults in a dynamic charging system including various coil faults, foreign objects, and converter failures will be performed. The simulation will be done on the system level to explore the interaction between smart grid and dynamic charging network. Different application scenarios, e.g., city trams, shuttle buses, and passenger cars will be studied with different driving cycles to investigate how dynamic charging fits into smart cities and interacts with the renewable power grid.