A Direct AC-DC Converter for Battery Chargers

Giri Venkataramanan
Department of Electrical Engineering
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717
Ph: (406) 994-5982
FAX: (406) 994-5958
E-mail: GiriV@ ee.montana.edu

Abstract:- The prospect of widespread introduction order to filter the input power fluctuations caused by
of electric vehicles has prompted the development of the input single phase line. The power balance between
public and private access battery charging stations in the input and output stages have to be coordinated to
California and elsewhere. Home charging stations gen- prevent dc voltage overshoots, resulting in complexity
erally aim at obtaining a unity power factor interface in the control strategy. The housekeeping and drive
with the single phase utility power source to maximize circuits for the various high and low side transistors
power capacity utilization. The rectified ac source feeds also add to the complexity of the realization of the
power to an intermediate dc bus. The dc bus power is power converter.
then converted into high frequency ac which is then
coupled to the vehicle using an inductively coupled Single phase input
device. In this paper an alternative approach to the
power conversion problem is presented. Operating I
limitations, design issues and simulation results are AC-DC Diode
presented in the paper. Bridge
I. INTRODUCTION
Concerns regarding greenhouse gases and air pol-
lution in heavily motor transportation dependent
coastal urban areas are prompting introduction of elec- Shaper
tric and hybrid electric vehicles in a widespread man-
ner. Various government and privately sponsored pro-
grams are under way to develop public and home elec-
I
*
DC-HF AC
tric vehicle charging stations in these areas. Inductive Converter
means of power transfer to the vehicle through a high
frequency transformer has been the choice in the
charging stations [l-41. This permits the vehicle to re-
ceive energy through a magnetic coupling as opposed to HF
conventional conductors, thereby reducing the possibil- Transformer
ity of safety hazards.
A functional schematic of the typical approach to
realizing these chargers is illustrated in Fig. 1. Despite Diode Bridge
being straight forward, this approach has a number of Rectifier
drawbacks. It may be noticed from the block diagram
that the converter has five distinct stages of power
transfer, each contributing to conduction losses. This
immediately translates into a maximum achievable Battery
efficiency for the overall system. Fig. 2 shows the
power circuit schematic of a system based on this ap- Fig. I : Block schematic of a typical unity power factor
proach incorporating a boost converter and a full bridge battery charger
converter. The intermediate dc bus is generally bulky in

0 1997 IEEE
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 This paper presents an alternative approach to the The following section presents the flyback topology
power conversion problem of charging batteries from ac based on the proposed approach, discussing its operat-
sources. The battery being a large energy storage ele- ing limitations. ;Section I11 presents a detailed analysis
ment in itself, is not highly sensitive to the: power ripple of the flyback based battery charger and the control
from the single phase ac source. As a result, the inter- methodology for the same. Simulation results are pre-
mediate dc bus used to absorb the line frequency varia- sented in Sectioin IV. A three phase extension of the
tion in power may be eliminated without compromising flyback converter is presented in Section V, which is
the performance of the overall system. This property is followed by a summary of results.
the major motivation behind the approach presented in
this paper. Fig. 3 illustrates the principle using a block 11. FLYBACK
BATTERY
CHARGER
diagram.
Fig. 4. illustrates the power circuit schematic of the
flyback battery charger [ 5 ] . The switch S is realized
using a four quadlrant switch with IGBTs and antiparal-
lel diodes. It should be noticed that the switch requires
only one gate drive input since the emitters of the two
IGBTs are referred to the same potential. When the
switch S is on, energy is stored in the primary winding
of the flyback transformer T. When switch S is turned
off, the current is picked up by the secondary winding
of the transformer. The secondary current channels
itself through appropriate diodes of the rectifier into the
battery.
In order to ensure that the diodes on the secondary
side of the transformer are blocking during the conduc-
tion period of S, the reflected primary voltage across
Fig. 2: Power circuit schematic of a boo,rt converter/ the input terminals of the bridge rectifier needs to be
full bridge converter based unity power jirctor battery less than the battery voltage. This may be ensured
charger through proper choice of transformer turns ratio based
on the maximum input voltage and minimum battery
Single phase input voltage.

s
Fig. 4: Power cinnuit schematic of the jlyback battery
charger

Diode Bridge The diodes forming the bridge rectifier on the sec-
Rectifier ondary side need to be rated for high frequency opera-
tion. It may be noticed that the secondary side of the
converter has no controlled switches. This translates
into simplicity of the controller for the converter. Since
Battery the output voltage and the input voltage of the con-
verter are independent quantities, switch S may be used
Fig. 3: Block schematic of proposed power converters to control the cunrent flow through the flyback trans-
for battery chargers former. The controlled current can be further chosen to
be of a shape which results in sinusoidal input currents
at unity power factor.

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 ANALYSIS
111. CONVERTER The turns ratio of the flyback transformer is de-
termined by the range of input voltage and the battery
The steady state transfer properties of flyback dc-dc voltage, as mentioned in the previous section to prevent
converter are well known 161. These properties readily
the forward biasing of the secondary side diode bridge
translate for application to the proposed converter. A during the on-period of S. This condition may be for-
simplified analysis is presented here to derive a control mally expressed as
expression relating the input current to the flyback
transformer primary current. Under assumptions of Vp(max) < n Vb(mm) (7)
ideal transformer, the voltage transfer ratio may be ex-
The value of the primary inductance of the flyback
pressed as transformer, switchmg frequency of the converter and
design of input filter for the converter are based on
considerations such as in a conventional flyback con-
verter 161.
where vb is the battery voltage, Vi is the input voltage, Since the input and output voltages of the con-
D is the duty ratio of switch S and n is the turns ratio of verter are independent quantities and the duty ratio is
the transformer. Since the battery voltage and input implicitly determined by these quantities, use of con-
voltage both are independent quantities, the duty ratio ventional duty ratio control will not lead to a steady
of the converter is constrained under periodic steady state. A current control loop is essential for steady state
state energy transfer in a controlled manner. T h s duty operation of the converter. Since the amplitude of the
ratio may be expressed by rearranging (1) as input current determines the power flow rate and hence
the charging rate of the battery, this is a natural mode
1
D=--- of control. Furthermore, the use of expression (6) to
I+- v; obtain a template for the primary current waveform
nvb
ensures that the average input current waveform is at
Moreover, the average input current (Ih) may be ex- unity power factor and minimizes harmonic reactive
pressed in terms of duty ratio and the equivalent pri- current drawn from the source. The current control of
mary side flyback transformer current (IL) as the primary inductor current may be performed using a
constant frequency current programmed mode or con-
tin = DIL stant off-time current programmed mode. Since the
From (2) and (3), converter operates at duty ratio greater than 50% as
determined by (2) and (7), the current controller is
likely to lead to sub-harmonic oscillations. A compen-
(4) sating ramp may be used for the current mode control-
I+-
nvb ler to prevent sub-harmonic instabilities [ 7 ] .
If the input ac voltage waveform is assumed to be a sine A block diagram of the controller using a constant
wave of amplitude V,, and it is desired to maintain the frequency current programmed mode is illustrated in
input current to be of a sine wave (at the same fre- Fig. 5 .
quency and phase as the voltage) of amplitude I,, (4)
may be rewritten to be,

L I I

The amplitude of the input average current I, rep-

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 R~suLr's
IV. SIMULATZON
A detailed simulation of the converter was
formed using MATLAB-Simulink. The parameter
the converter used in the s i m ~ ~ ~ was
a ~ o120V
n rms ac
input, 200 V battery, 250 pH primary ~ n ~ ~ ~ ~ofc the~ance
flyback transformer, 10 pEl input filter inductor and 50
pF input filter capacitor. The convefler:vias operated to
draw 20A of current from the ac SOUPIX. 'The turns ratio
of the transformer was unity. The convcsiier was con-
trolled with a constant off time currenit ~ r o g r a ~ ~ ~ ~ e ~
mode regulator.
The input current waveform of the converter at the
line terminals including the input filter is slhown in Fig.
6. Fig. 7 shows the command current ~ ~ ~ ~for: t f ~ r m
rectified primary side current calculated using t
by relation (6). The s ~ ~ ~ uwas ~ a t ~ ~ n
the ~ e ~ o r mata vxying
~ c ~ rates of
battery charging and input voltage varieitioras and the
converter was found tc perform as expected. Daring the
cross over points, thc input driving voltage is too IOW to
build up current in the inductor. Hence these is a no-
ticeable distortion in the current. This intro a
small amount of harmonics into the line. The of
the waveform was calculated to be less thain 1% and the
power factor of the ~ a v e f o was
r ~ greater than 99%.

Fig. 6 Input current waveform of ihe unify power fac-

Tme sec0 d
Fig 7. C'ommand currentLave&)m iIL*i j%r the pri-
mary side of the flyback transformer.

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 eration were derived. A control method which operates Maximum Power Factor, “ IEE Proceedings. Vol.
in a constant frequency current programmed mode was 133, No.4, July 1986, pp. 179-204.
presented. Simulation results verifying the performance 5 I. Takahashi, “Power Factor Improvement for a
of the converter were presented. An extension of the Diode Rectifier Circuit by Dither Signals”, IEEE
converter to three phase input operation was intro- IAS Annual Meeting Conference Record, 1990, pp.
duced. 1289-1294.
The proposed approach has 4 silicon devices in se- [6] R. D. Middlebrook and S. Cuk, “Advances in
ries in the power flow path, while the boost con-
Switched Mode Power Conversion,’’ Vol. 1-111,
verter/full bridge converter has 7 silicon devices. This
TESLAco, Pasadena, CA., 1983.
translates to potentially smaller conduction power
losses due to switching devices. [7] R. D. Middlebrook, “Topics in Multiple Loop
Regulators and Current Mode Programming”,
Although the converter features minimum sim-
IEEE-PESC 85 Record, pp. 716-732.
plicity in terms of control and topology, there are a
certain drawbacks which are identified. The parent
topology being a flyback results in high peak current
ratings for the IGBT switches and the transformer. This
is likely to lead to difficulties in realization of the con-
verter at power levels beyond a few 100W. However,
the simplicity of the approach is particularly attractive.
The principle maybe extended to the transformer iso-
lated Single Ended Primary Inductor Converter
(SEPIC) with certain advantages in input filter size.
The current control algorithm requires feedforward of
input voltage and the battery voltage. The battery volt-
age is also required by the primary side converter for
control of the charging algorithm. The high frequency
transformer itself may be used for communicating the
battery voltage across the magnetic power coupling. A
battery voltage observer may also be constructed using
the voltage across the primary winding of the trans-
former. A laboratory prototype of the converter is being
constmcted and related issues are being studied. The
results of the study will be reported in the future.
REFERENCES
[I] A. Esser, “Contactless Charging and Communica-
tion for Electric Vehicles”, IEEE Industry Applica-
tions Magazine, Vol. 1, No.6, Nov./Dec. 95, pp. 4-
11.
[2] K. W. Klontz, A. Esser, P.J. Wolfs and D. M. Di-
van, “ Converter selection for electric vehicle
charger systems with high frequency high power
link’, IEEE-PESC ‘93 Record.
133 K. W. Klontz, D. M. Divan and D. W. Novotny,
“Universal inductive interface for electric vehicle
charger systems”, Power Conversion International
Conference, Yokohoma, 1993.
[4] J. Ch. Bendien, G. Fregien, J. D. v. Wyk, High Ef-
ficiency On-Board Battery Charger with Trans-
former Isolation, Sinusoidal Input current and

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