Wireless Power Transfer System for Electric Vehicle Charging

Pedro Miguel Conceição Lopes

Key information

Authors:

Pedro Miguel Conceição Lopes (Pedro Miguel Conceição Lopes)

Supervisors:

Sónia Maria Nunes dos Santos Paulo Ferreira Pinto (Sónia Maria Nunes dos Santos Paulo Ferreira Pinto); Pedro Miguel Batista de Sousa Correia da Costa (Pedro Miguel Batista de Sousa Correia da Costa)

Published in

01/27/2021

Abstract

The research regarding new ways of charging an electric vehicle (EV) is a treading research topic. Wireless charging is one of many technologies currently being investigated and preferred for various applications. With this technology, there is no physical connection between the EV and the charging station, providing a pleasant experience between the vehicle and the user. However, the question arises about how well it performs compared with other technologies of EV's. This thesis studied the behavior of a prototype of a wireless power transfer system for EVs that was designed and built to analyze and understand the wireless charging process. A first analysis was made on the operating principles of wireless power transfer supported on the state of the art of the currently used technologies. The resonant wireless charging was selected as the best candidate for the prototype model based on physical and power demands. A 100 W inductive charger prototype using a resonant tank was designed and tested using the Simulink and Matlab software. A controller was dimensioned and simulated to control the load voltage. A prototype was built to scale, and experimental tests were carried out to validate the proposed topology and controller. The experiment data was analyzed, and conclusions were drawn regarding the resonant inductive charger's overall performance.