Off-board electric vehicle battery charger using PV array

During the recent decade, the automobile industry is booming with the evolution of electric vehicle (EV). Battery charging system plays a major role in the development of EVs. Charging of EV battery from the grid increases its load demand. This leads to propose a photovoltaic (PV) array-based off-board EV battery charging system in this study. Irrespective of solar irradiations, the EV battery is to be charged constantly which is achieved by employing a backup battery bank in addition to the PV array. Using the sepic converter and three-phase bidirectional DC-DC converter, the proposed system is capable of charging the EV battery during both sunshine hours and non-sunshine hours. During peak sunshine hours, the backup battery gets charged along with the EV battery and during non-sunshine hours, the backup battery supports the charging of EV battery. The proposed charging system is simulated using Simulink in the MATLAB software and an experimental prototype is fabricated and tested in the laboratory and the results are furnished in this study.