Smart electronic module for EV charging

Number of Students : 2
Guides : Umanand L
Sponsor : Amberoot Systems (Ganganna Sudhakar)

A module capable of handling communication protocols required to establish EV charging setup.
Idea: With the surge in electric vehicles there is a need to establish a predictable charging infrastructure. The electric vehicles can be charging either using onboard charging system or external fast charging systems. On board charging system are often at lower power level due to charger weight restrictions and also limited by accessible power source which would be domestic single-phase grid. As a result, they would need tens of hours of charge time which may be acceptable for overnight charging but not for on the road charging needs. External fast charging solution or charging station, thus becomes important to extend the range of electric vehicle. The charging station would be of capacity from 20KW to even more than 80KW.
Unlike the on-board charging which takes direct AC input, the fast-charging station provides high voltage and high current DC interface which gets connected to vehicle’s battery almost directly. However, to facilitate protection and compatibility with various types of vehicles there are standards and systems that are in place to negotiate and determine charging requirements such as voltage current limit, end of charge detection and also detect any errors etc. Apart from the vehicle interface part the charging station also would need main power converters at multiple tens of KW level.
The power converter part would be handled by Amberroot, however the vehicle interface including negotiation part, metering part etc. should be in the scope of the MTech project.