A Review of Converter Topologies for Battery Charging Applications in Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

The subsequent rapid increase in the Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) in the past one decade, has led to the significant intensification of one particular type of Electric Vehicles (EVs) known as Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). An expeditious gain in PHEVs is due to the clean environmental considerations and secondly because of the ability of recharging its own energy storage (battery) from an off-board power sources peculiarly a grid. The most prominent issue in these vehicles is the method by which the charging of the batteries should be done and secondly the increasing demand of power required due to the rapid demand of electric power necessitated by PHEVs. This paper surveys the state of the art of existing converter topologies which is indispensable for charging the PHEVs battery charging schemes. This paper will make an attempt as an assessment to give a detailed review of different power electronic topologies used in PHEVs such as bi-directional AC-DC and DC-DC converters which fulfill these requirements. Further, an inference would be drawn by discussing the best choice of topology to be adopted for the efficient and more reliable applications in PHEVs.