An EV Quick Charging Station Using a Pulse

Frequency Current Control Technique

Phoompat Jampeethong Surin Khomfoi
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang
Bangkok, Thailand, 10520 Bangkok, Thailand, 10520
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— An electric vehicle (EV) quick charging station Thereupon, a pulse charging method is an alternative
using pulse frequency current control technique is developed technique for a quick charger at high current. A pulse charge
in this paper. The current source modular converter method can be injected higher peak voltage and current with
configuration is used to perform the charging pulses with both the same of V/cell and Imax rated; therefore, a charging time
positive and negative pulse to achieve time required for an EV
is shorter comparing to CC and CV method [2].
which is less than 30 minutes. The positive pulse charge
permits the high peak current charge: this will lead to quick There are some previous researches using pulse charge
charging mode; whereas, the idle state can control battery technique for a charger application. The hybrid method
temperature rise. The frequency used for pulse charge between regenerative pulse and equalization charger using
technique can be varied depending on the type and condition a DSP has been developed in [3]. The proposed technique
of a battery. The use of current source converter can offer the used high switching frequency for charging operation
inherit fault tolerance capability and bidirectional power which provided low ripple current but higher switching
flow. PSIM 9.0.3 is utilized for simulation study and the 50 losses in power devices: this might lead to high temperature
kW prototype is developed to validate the proposed notion. rise. A flyback converter with positive and negative pulse
The simulation and experimental results illustrate that the
charger with power factor correction has been introduced
proposed pulse frequency charging technique requires about
16 minutes to fully charge battery from 20% of SOC at 80% in [4]. The results in [4] offered a good power factor and
of SOC. The temperature rise of pulse frequency charging bidirectional power flow; however, the temperature rise of
technique is less than 4 °C:these can lead to quicker charge the battery did not discuss in the research. Designs of
and longer battery lifetime. The results suggest that the battery pulse charge with varying frequency and duty
proposed technique can be applied for an electric vehicle cycles have been proposed in [5-6]. The proposed method
quick charger station. has been designed for a small Li-Ion battery and could be
applied for an EV battery. However, the temperature rise
Keywords— quick charging; electric vehicle; pulse and the effect of frequency and duty cycle of pulse signal
charge; SOC did not investigate. In addition, a review of charging
I. INTRODUCTION algorithm for Nickel and Lithium battery charger has been
performed in [7]. The methods discussed in [7] are
Recently, electric vehicles (EVs) have grown rapidly as investigated mostly a small size applications for mobile
demanded green energy form the world. More specially, in phones, laptop computer, tablet PC, etc. One can see that a
a large city, air pollution due to CO2 emission is a concerned few researches have been done for a pulse quick charge
issue. For instance, Nissan LEAF sales have officially technique for an EV.
surpassed 100,000 units worldwide in January 2014 Therefore, a pulse frequency technique of a quick
capturing about 45% market share of EV business. Also, charger is proposed in this research. Suitable duty cycles
the battery technology for EVs is developed to be a high rate and frequencies of positive and negative pulses are
charge and discharge. Therefore, higher number of EVs will investigated for a particular EV battery.
be used in the next few years. It is expected that more than
5 million EVs will be utilized by 2020 [1]. Generally, EVs
can run for about 150 km; therefore, a charging station is
required which has a function like a gas station. There are
three important issues for a charging station: quick charge
(less than 30 minutes), long battery lifetime (low
temperature rise during charge), and standardization (every
vehicle providers can be used).
Constant current (CC) and constant voltage (CV)
method is normally used for a battery charger. CC provides
shorter time for charging a battery with higher temperature
rise; whereas, CV offers low temperature rise with longer
charging time. With the limit of voltage per cell (V/cell) and
maximum charging current (Imax) from battery providers,
CC and CV method cannot meet the 30 minutes charging Fig. 1. Quick charging station for EVs.
time and low temperature rise requirements from EV users.

978-1-4799-7961-5/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

Duty cycle and switching frequency of the developed As can be seen, in (1) the parameter c can be changed
paradigm can be controlled to meet the quick charge and by a charging method as explained in [7].
longer battery lifetime with different type of batteries. The The pulse frequency can be generated from a modulation
proposed circuit diagram is an improved version from [8] between desired positive pulse and negative pulses and a
which can operate in bidirectional power flow via using a triangle waveform. The positive and negative pulse width
current source converter for better fault tolerance can be controlled depending on the battery conditions
capability. PSIM 9.0.3 is utilized for simulation study and (V/cell and Imax) and battery temperature rise (ΔTo). The
the 50 kW prototype is developed to validate the proposed temperature rise during charge can effect a battery lifetime
notion. The possible quick charger station is shown in Fig.. as depicted in Fig. 2. Clearly, if a temperature increases
1. A possible application of this proposed method can be about 5 oC from 25 oC , a lift time is expected to decrease
used as a charging station for an EV as proposed in [9]. A about 30% in lead acid and about 10% of lithium battery.
set of photovoltaic cells can also be integrated with a A circuit operation incorporating with related pulse width
charging station for better energy efficacy. signals is illustrated in Fig. 3. The positive pulse width is
depended upon V/cell; whereas, the idle state is referred
II. PROPOSED CONTROL PARADIGM with battery temperature rise. If the battery temperature rise
To represent a battery electrochemical action, the ac- is higher than 4 Co the idle state interval will increase to
impedance method is normally used as clearly explained in control the battery temperature as depicted in Fig. 4. Fig. 4
[7-8] and will not repeat here. Briefly, a charge transfer also shows a flow chart diagram of proposed quick
resistance in a battery represents to interfacial charging paradigm. As can be seen, temperature rise
electrochemical impedance and this resistance is reciprocal control is used during constant voltage charging mode: this
to exchange current density (io) and the exchange current would not cost battery lifetime.
density can be written by

io  Fk0 (1   )1   c1 (1)

where,
F = the Faraday constant (96487 C/equiv),
ko = the standard rate constant for heterogeneous
reaction,
ɵ = the mole fraction,
α = the transfer coefficient ,
c = the concentration at the surface of the
electrode. Fig. 2. The temperature rise during charge can effect a battery lifetime.

Q1 Stage: 1
VL VQ1
L1

Vb
L2

L3
C dc

VQ2
Stage: 2
Q2
VL

L1 Vb

Vb
L2

L3
C dc

IB

Stage: 3
VL

L1
t1 t2 t3 t4

Vb
L2

C dc ① ③
②
L3

Fig. 3. Proposed Circuit operation

 PSIM 9.0.3 is used to simulate the notion of the battery during charging process (ΔTo). Both positive and
proposed system as illustrated in Fig. 5. Gate drive signals idle pulses at 50 Hz frequency are modulated with a
are generated using pulse width modulation (PWM). There triangle waveform at 5 kHz. For a particular study, d  =
are two reference signals: positive pulse (d  ) and idle state 0.5 and d  = 0.08 are used. All gate drive signals and
pulse (d  ). Positive and idle state are independently modulation signals are depicted in Fig.. 4. The simulation
control. As previously mentioned, positive pulse width (d results are shown in Fig.. 6. As can be seen, battery

) is depended on voltage per cell (V/cell) charging voltage and charging/discharging current are
pulse frequency signals and can be controlled V/cell and
Imax by adjusting d  and d  . As can be seen, the circuit is
START based on simple buck-boost converter with bidirectional
power flow function. Also, a control algorithm is also
simple and possible to implement in a single chip.
YES
Icharge set = Ibat
NO III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The developed 50 kW prototype of a quick charger
Icharge set < 0.8 Ibat
YES NO using pulse frequency technique is shown in Fig. 7. Nisan
LEAF 2012 was used to validate the charging time of the
Icharge set < 0.1 Ibat developed charger. The LEAF has 24 kWh laminated
YES
NO lithium ion battery and requires 30 minutes at 50 kW
charging time for a quick charge mode. The developed
Icharge = 1.2 Icharge set
current source converter can performed both conventional
CC/CV charging mode and pulse frequency charging
Vcharge < Vmax
NO mode. The developed charger is communicated with the
YES Nissan LEAF via CHAdeMO standard. The suitable
Delay 9 Sec
frequency and duty cycle (d  ) were investigated for this
Icharge = 0 Icharge = Icharge set particular battery as shown in Table I. Obviously, 0.75 duty
cycle of positive pulse with 25 Hz frequency was selected
Delay 1 Sec as a reference signal to modulate with a triangle for
generating pulse frequency because they provided less
charging time and lowest temperature rise. The selected
NO duty cycle and frequency are selected based on battery
SOC = 80%
measured parameters from the tested Nissan LEAF. The
Current form EV + pulse
YES
optimal duty cycle for pulse charging technique can be
END
calculated based on charging efficiency and exchange
current density as developed by [7-8]. It should be noted
Fig. 4. Proposed control paradigm that different batteries (types and providers) would have
and maximum charging current (Imax) of battery. Idle state different battery parameters.
pulse width (d  ) is used to control temperature rise of a

Fig. 5. Simulation model

 The developed prototype was also performed The terminal voltage were regulated at 400 V and
conventional CC and CV experiment to compare with the maximum charging current (Imax) was limited at 120 A as
pulse frequency charging mode. Fig. 8. and Fig. 9. are shown from Fig. 8 to Fig. 11. Fig. 8 shows the results of
experimental results of battery charging and discharging conventional CC/CV charging mode. As known, the CC
using CC and CV technique; whereas, Fig.. 10 and Fig.. 11 will perform first then the CV mode will operate to keep
are the experimental results using the proposed pulse temperature rise. The charging time required is about 20
frequency technique. The LEAF was validated at a same min. It should be noted that EVs will control the charging
circumstance. The LEAF was charged from 20% of SOC process via CHAdeMO using CAN bus communication.
to 80% of SOC in quick charging mode. As can be seen, Fig. 9 also shows the magnified view of terminal voltage
the terminal voltage were regulated for both charging and current. After that, the pulse frequency charging mode
methods. The charging process was performed until the results are illustrated in Fig. 10 and 11. As can be seen, the
tested battery was fully charged. pulse frequency charge will perform during constant
TABLE I voltage region which is not over the current limitation. The
SUITABLE REFERENCE SIGNAL PARAMETER FOR BATTERY UNDER TEST results show that the required charging time is about 16
min. The temperature investigation both at the battery and
Frequency at 50Hz d+ at 0.75
developed charger were also observed as shown in Fig. 12.
Variable d Variable Frequency
In addition, Fig. 10 shows the comparison results of
+

d + Charging time
Frequency ∆T ( °C) charging performance between conventional CC/CV
(minute)
charging method and proposed pulse frequency technique.
0.5 325 25 3.275 Clearly, the proposed pulse frequency technique can
50 3.575 change the test batteries from 20 percent of state of charge
0.75 250 100 3.875 (SOC) to 80% of SOC quicker than conventional CC/CV
200 3.650
method about four min. Moreover, the temperature rise of
proposed charging technique is less than a CC/CV method
about 1 oC. One can see that the proposed technique can
perform better charging performance in term of charging
time and temperature rise. The experimental results
illustrate that the proposed pulse frequency technique is a
promising technique to apply for a quick charger in EVs.

Fig. 8. Voltage and current signals of the tested battery set using
Fig. 6. Simulation results: (a) an inductor current (b) charging voltage Conventional CC/CV method.
and current of a battery.

Fig. 9. Magnified view of terminal voltage, current and temperature of

the tested battery set using conventional CC/CV method.

Fig. 7. A pulse frequency 50 kW charger prototype

 22.1
22
21
20
19
18
17 15.8
16

Constant Voltage with

15
14
13
12
current setpoint form EV
Constant Voltage with
11
10
9
current setpoint form EV
+ Pulse Charge
8
7

0.1 Hz D=0.8
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Time (Minute)

Fig. 10. Voltage and current signals of the tested battery set using Fig. 13. Comparison results of charging performance between a CC/CV
proposed pulse frequency technique and the proposed technique at SOC 20%.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
A pulse frequency technique of a quick charger has been
developed in this paper. Pulse frequency charging technique
can offer quicker battery charger comparing to conventional
CC/CV technique about 4 minutes and lower temperature
rise about 1 CO. A simulation study has also been performed
to evaluate circuit operation and control paradigm. The
suitable reference signal parameters for the battery under
test have also been investigated. The proposed pulse
frequency charging technique has been performed under
Nissan LEAF model 2012. The experimental results also
imply that this pulse frequency charging technique can also
Fig. 11. Magnified view of terminal voltage, current and temperature of be applied with other types of EV batteries. An EV battery
the tested battery set using proposed pulse frequency technique. pack normally consists of several single battery cells;
therefore, it is possible to apply this pulse frequency
technique in EV charger with carefully battery
management. Although a cost of a bidirectional power flow
converter will increase for a pulse frequency charger, the
extra performance for quicker charging time and low
temperature rise during charging process are required for an
EV charging station.
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