PV-based off-board electric vehicle battery charger using BIDC

In recent years, the use of renewable energy sources is increasing drastically in several sectors, which leads to its role in the automobile industry to charge electric vehicle (EV) batteries. In this paper, a photovoltaic (PV) array-fed off-board battery charging system using a bidirectional interleaved DC-DC converter (BIDC) is proposed for light-weight EVs. This off-board charging system is capable of operating in dual mode, thereby supplying power to the EV battery from the PV array in standstill conditions and driving the DC load by the EV battery during running conditions. This dual mode operation is accomplished by the use of a three-phase BIDC. The model of the proposed system is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink software while a hardware prototype of 250 W is fabricated and tested in the laboratory. Simulation and experimental results are furnished in this paper.