Power Electronics Converters for an Electric Charging Station: Description and Experimental Evaluation

This paper presents the power electronics converters of an electric vehicle charging station that works as a DC microgrid with an AC grid interface. The interface converter is an interleaved bidirectional DC-AC converter that enables the V2G (vehicle-to-grid) application. Inside the microgrid, there are converters for managing power from the DC bus to the electrical vehicles (wireless charging type) and stationary battery banks – all bidirectional, too. To constitute the sustainable characteristic of the solution, a solar photovoltaic system is attached to the DC bus through a power electronics converter. The control methodology and experimental results from the proposed system with focus on the converters characteristics are presented. This manuscript highlights a noteworthy reduction in the total harmonic distortion for the injected grid current as well as enhanced stability during battery charging and discharging in both wired and wireless modes.