Bidirectional Converter for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle On-Board Battery Chargers with Hybrid Technique

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presents a new control algorithm for the bidirectional converter of hybrid electrical vehicle onboard battery chargers. The manuscript is well written and has a logical structure. However, the presented research is based only on simulations and no experimental verification is presented. 

 The introduction section is well written and provides a clear motivation for the research work. The literature review is well done but has no conclusion or summary (NB! suggestion for revision). 

The methodology part is well presented and correct. The simulations are done appropriately. The conclusions are supported by results.

The weakest part of the manuscript is formatting, there are several issues that need to be fixed:

- Abbreviations defined in the abstract must be defined in the main text (e.g., PHEV, EV, etc.).

- Please use the same style for abbreviations (e.g., line 54 dc-to-dc and line 146 AC/DC).

- All figures must be formatted with the same style, incl. fonts, symbols, and colors.

Author Response

Reviewer Comments

1. The manuscript presents a new control algorithm for the bidirectional converter of hybrid electrical vehicle onboard battery chargers. The manuscript is well written and has a logical structure. However, the presented research is based only on simulations and no experimental verification is presented. 

Answer:

Thank you for your valuable time and observation. In this research, we have focused mainly on the simulation for analyzing the proposed method. We are planning to do the experimental research as a future work.

2. The introduction section is well written and provides a clear motivation for the research work. The literature review is well done but has no conclusion or summary (NB! suggestion for revision). 

Answer:

Thank you for your valuable time and observation. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have included the summary of the literature review at the end of section 2.

3. The methodology part is well presented and correct. The simulations are done appropriately. The conclusions are supported by results.

Answer:

Thank you for your valuable time and observation.

4. The weakest part of the manuscript is formatting, there are several issues that need to be fixed.

Answer:

Thank you for your useful comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have verified and updated the manuscript format.

5. Abbreviations defined in the abstract must be defined in the main text (e.g., PHEV, EV, etc.).

Answer:

Thank you for your important comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have defined the abbreviations (PHEV, EV, etc.) in the main text also.

6. Please use the same style for abbreviations (e.g., line 54 dc-to-dc and line 146 AC/DC).

Answer:

Thank you for your useful comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have maintained the same style for abbreviations (DC-DC and AC-DC) in entire manuscript.

7. All figures must be formatted with the same style, incl. fonts, symbols, and colors.

Answer:

Thank you for your constructive comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have formatted all the figures with the same style, fonts, symbols, and colors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate all the efforts that the author has put into this research paper. This study establishes an isolated converter topology for PHEVs to preserve battery-charging functions through a lesser amount of power electronic devices over the existing topology. However, the following issues must be considered.

1. Considered paper is not well written and prepared in general although topic interesting and could be useful for journal audience. Significant modifications are required to become acceptable for consideration. Introduction section must be prepared on more quality way, more up-to-date references should be addressed, research gap clearly discussed and main objective of the paper clearly defined.

2. Novelty of the research is not clear, applied approach should be compared with other conducted research studies, and novelty highlighted?

3. Experimental setup is weakly elaborated, more details should be provided. Methodology section is also poorly written, not clear and confusing, must be improved with more details, discussed weaknesses and potential issues that can affect results (limitations of the work).

Author Response

Reviewer Comments:

I appreciate all the efforts that the author has put into this research paper. This study establishes an isolated converter topology for PHEVs to preserve battery-charging functions through a lesser amount of power electronic devices over the existing topology. However, the following issues must be considered.

1. Considered paper is not well written and prepared in general although topic interesting and could be useful for journal audience. Significant modifications are required to become acceptable for consideration. Introduction section must be prepared on more quality way, more up-to-date references should be addressed, research gap clearly discussed and main objective of the paper clearly defined.

Answer:

Thank you for your useful comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have updated the introduction with up-to-date references, research gap and objectives.

Cited References:

[17] Bak, Yeongsu, and Ho-Sung Kang. "Control Methods for Performance Improvement of an Integrated On-Board Battery Charger in Hybrid Electric Vehicles." Electronics 10, no. 20 (2021): 2506.

[18] Nam, Vu-Hai, Duong-Van Tinh, and Woojin Choi. "A Novel Hybrid LDC Converter Topology for the Integrated On-Board Charger of Electric Vehicles." Energies 14, no. 12 (2021): 3603.

[19] Bayati, Mahdi, Mehrdad Abedi, Maryam Farahmandrad, Gevork B. Gharehpetian, and Kambiz Tehrani. "Important Technical Considerations in Design of Battery Chargers of Electric Vehicles." Energies 14, no. 18 (2021): 5878.

[20] Yuan, Jiaqi, Lea Dorn-Gomba, Alan Dorneles Callegaro, John Reimers, and Ali Emadi. "A review of bidirectional on-board chargers for electric vehicles." IEEE Access 9 (2021): 51501-51518.

Research Gap:

EVs are rapidly advancing, opening up substantial prospects to increase the use of sustainable energy in the automotive sector. OBCs are frequently utilized in EVs due to their easy installation and low price [17]. An OBC needs to be power-dense and extremely efficient because to the constrained interior area and quick charging times. A further factor driving interest in bidirectional power flow technologies in the automobile industry is the potential for EVs to provide electricity back into the grid [18]. This article provides a thorough analysis and research of the most recent bidirectional OBC methods. OBC enables EVs to be charged instantly from the Utility grid, is popular in the automobile industry for its practicality, particularly when contrasted to the expensive and many off-board charging options [19]. Due to their low battery deterioration and straightforward hardware requirements, unidirectional OBCs are widely used. Although, the advancement of EVs has made their promise as a portable energy source more apparent [20]. So, this research focused on bidirectional isolated converter to achieve better battery SOC.

Objectives:

• A novel technique name called NN-IPSO is proposed to determine the best suitable converter topology for battery charger management.
• The stability of the system is improved using NN-IPSO which interfaces the battery with an isolated converter topology.

2. Novelty of the research is not clear, applied approach should be compared with other conducted research studies, and novelty highlighted?

Answer:

Thank you for your important comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have described the novelty of this research at the beginning of section 3. And we have compared the proposed method with existing studies (Table 3) which are discussed at section 4.1.

Earlier, we have compared the proposed method with reference [26]. As per the reviewer’s comment, additionally, we have compared one more recent year paper [25] which is described at section 4.1.

Cited Reference:

[25] Kanimozhi, G.; Natrayan, L.; Angalaeswari, S.; Paramasivam, P. An Effective Charger for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) with an Enhanced PFC Rectifier and ZVS-ZCS DC/DC High-Frequency Converter. Journal of Advanced Transportation 2022, 2022, 7840102.

[26] He, C.; Wang, Z.; Yang, S.; Huang, J.; Ge, X. An Integrated SRM Powertrain Topology for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles with Multiple Driving and On-board Charging Capabilities, IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, 2020.

3. Experimental setup is weakly elaborated, more details should be provided. Methodology section is also poorly written, not clear and confusing, must be improved with more details, discussed weaknesses and potential issues that can affect results (limitations of the work).

Answer:

Thank you for your important comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have described the Experimental setup (Table 1) at section 4. Also, we have provided the proposed methodology with clear details at section 3.

The limitation of the work:

The network has finished training when the error on the sample is decreased to a specific value, so, it does not produce the best outcomes. furthermore, the proposed converter can be used in AC/DC microgrids which means a small portion of low voltage distribution systems located far from power generating stations and linked to electricity grids via the Point of Common Coupling.

The above information is updated at the end of conclusion section.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1- The presentation of some graphs could be improved. Sometimes the figures have a different lay-out and could be presented in a more homogeneous manner. approximately the same letter font/height. Sometimes figures next to each other have a different font height.

2- some figure font is too bis and some figure font is too small.

3- the recent literature should be added in the introduction section and the reference also.

4- the operation of the proposed converter should be discussed in details. the proposed converter should be experimentally tested and compared with simulation results.

5- Is this converter did not introduced before?

Author Response

Reviewer Comments:

1. The presentation of some graphs could be improved. Sometimes the figures have a different lay-out and could be presented in a more homogeneous manner. Approximately the same letter font/height. Sometimes figures next to each other have a different font height.

Answer:

Thank you for your important comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have updated and maintained all the figures presentation in an equal layout (From 5 to 12).

2. Some figure font is too big and some figure font is too small.

Answer:

Thank you for your constructive comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have maintained the uniform font size in all the figures (From 5 to 12).

3. The recent literature should be added in the introduction section and the reference also.

Answer:

Thank you for your valuable comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have included the recent literature in introduction and cited in the reference section also.

Cited Reference:

[6] Yadlapalli, Ravindranath Tagore, Anuradha Kotapati, Rajani Kandipati, and Chandra Sekhar Koritala. "A review on energy efficient technologies for electric vehicle applications." Journal of Energy Storage 50 (2022): 104212.

[11] Cheng, He, Dongbin Zhang, Shuo Liao, Dali Shao, and Yihua Hu. "Integrated Drive Converter of SDS-SRM with Isolation and Nonisolation Charging Capabilities for Electric Vehicle." IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics 69, no. 9 (2021): 8679-8691.

[12] Rathore, Vinay, Ravi Prakash Reddy Siddavatam, and Kaushik Rajashekara. "An Isolated Multilevel DC-DC Converter Topology with Hybrid Resonant Switching for EV Fast Charging Application." IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (2022).

[25] Kanimozhi, G., L. Natrayan, S. Angalaeswari, and Prabhu Paramasivam. "An Effective Charger for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) with an Enhanced PFC Rectifier and ZVS-ZCS DC/DC High-Frequency Converter." Journal of Advanced Transportation 2022 (2022).

4. The operation of the proposed converter should be discussed in details. The proposed converter should be experimentally tested and compared with simulation results.

Answer:

Thank you for your useful comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have explained the operation of proposed converter at section 3.1. We have validated the simulation results of proposed method with reference [25] in comparative analysis (Table 3) at section 4.1.

In this research, we have focused mainly on the simulation for analyzing the proposed method. We are planning to do the experimental research as a future work.

Cited References:

[25] Kanimozhi, G., L. Natrayan, S. Angalaeswari, and Prabhu Paramasivam. "An Effective Charger for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) with an Enhanced PFC Rectifier and ZVS-ZCS DC/DC High-Frequency Converter." Journal of Advanced Transportation 2022 (2022).

5. Is this converter did not introduced before?

Answer:

Thank you for your useful comments. This converter topology is selected from the reference [28]. In our research, we have introduced the algorithm name called NN-IPSO with this converter topology [28] to minimize the switching loss and distortion error.

Cited Reference:

[28] Viana, Caniggia, and Peter W. Lehn. "A drivetrain integrated DC fast charger with buck and boost functionality and simultaneous drive/charge capability." IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification 5, no. 4 (2019): 903-911.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments to the authors

Manuscript ID: wevj-1812608

Title: Bidirectional Converter for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle on-board Battery Chargers with Hybrid Technique

1) I fail to understand why the authors used PSO algorithm. I believe that the use of PSO could be motivated better. What are the main features of the problem that fit well with the PSO algorithm? What happens if one uses a different algorithm?

2) One of the main applications of bidirectional converters is in AC/DC microgrids. In these systems, the bidirectional converters are used to inject power from Ac grid to DC grid, and vice versa. I believe that the proposed converter can be used in AC/DC microgrids. I highly recommend the authors to mention this potential application as a remark in the manuscript. For more information, the authors can use the following publications:

[R1]. “Robust Optimal Power Management System for a Hybrid AC/DC Micro-Grid,” 2015. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSTE.2015.2405935]

[R2]. “Integration of AC/DC Microgrids into Power Grids”, 2020. [https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083313]

3) From flowchart shown in Figure 4, the authors use neural networks to check the duty cycle. However, no information about the network is shown in the manuscript. More details are required.

4) It seems that the authors have not considered the dynamics of the system in the simulations results, as the voltage in Figure 5 is constant. Am I right?

5) It is not clear how parameters in (7) are determined. How can one determine the sigmoid function? Any impact on the performance?

Author Response

Reviewer Comments:

Title: Bidirectional Converter for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle on-board Battery Chargers with Hybrid Technique

• I fail to understand why the authors used PSO algorithm. I believe that the use of PSO could be motivated better. What are the main features of the problem that fit well with the PSO algorithm? What happens if one uses a different algorithm?

Answer:

Thank you for your useful comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have described the main features of PSO over different algorithms at section 3.3.1.

One of the best computational intelligence methods used to solve complicated problems is swarm intelligence. All the swarm intelligence algorithms are suitable for these applications. We welcome this initiative, but some of the algorithms find it computationally inefficient.

So, we have chosen PSO which is computationally effective, produce superior outcomes more quickly and inexpensively than other methods.

So, we have used PSO in this research.

• One of the main applications of bidirectional converters is in AC/DC microgrids. In these systems, the bidirectional converters are used to inject power from Ac grid to DC grid, and vice versa. I believe that the proposed converter can be used in AC/DC microgrids. I highly recommend the authors to mention this potential application as a remark in the manuscript. For more information, the authors can use the following publications:

[R1]. “Robust Optimal Power Management System for a Hybrid AC/DC Micro-Grid,” 2015. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSTE.2015.2405935]

[R2]. “Integration of AC/DC Microgrids into Power Grids”, 2020. [https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083313]

 Answer:

Thank you for your valuable comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have included the application remarks and future work at section 5.

3) From flowchart shown in Figure 4, the authors use neural networks to check the duty cycle. However, no information about the network is shown in the manuscript. More details are required.

 Answer:

Thank you for your important comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have included the process of duty cycle (below figure 3) analysis by neural network (Line 344-362) at section 3.3.2.

4) It seems that the authors have not considered the dynamics of the system in the simulations results, as the voltage in Figure 5 is constant. Am I right?

Answer:

I agree with your valuable comment. We have not considered the dynamics of the system in the simulations results, because the dynamic state is the ability of a power system to return to a steady state of operation after significant disturbances. So, we have fixed the voltage as constant which has the ability to fluctuate output current to maintain a set voltage. In the future work, we will analyze the dynamics of the system.

5) It is not clear how parameters in (7) are determined. How can one determine the sigmoid function? Any impact on the performance?

Answer:

Thank you for your important comment. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have updated the equation (7) along with reference [31] (Line 294-315) and explained the impact of sigmoid function at section 3.3.2.

In this paper, the sigmoid function is adopted to enhance the IPSO technique with inertial weight and applied to the identification of parameter variation in structural systems.

Cited References:

[31] Chen, Zhen, Yaru Wang, Tommy HT Chan, Xiaoke Li, and Shunbo Zhao. "A Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm with Sigmoid Increasing Inertia Weight for Structural Damage Identification." Applied Sciences 12, no. 7 (2022): 3429.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The  authors addressed my concerns. For a long time in the future, most microgrids are DC-AC hybrid microgrids, and corresponding introductions and discussions should be mentioned. The reference list should be improved, more microgrids control and protection work should be mentioned. See some examples:

● Sahoo, S. K., Sinha, A. K., & Kishore, N. K. (2017). Control techniques in AC, DC, and hybrid AC–DC microgrid: a review. IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, 6(2), 738-759.

● Chen, M., Ma, S., Wan, H., Wu, J., & Jiang, Y. (2018). Distributed Control Strategy for DC Microgrids of Photovoltaic Energy Storage Systems in Off-Grid Operation. Energies, 11(10), 2637.

● Aluisio, B., Bruno, S., De Bellis, L., Dicorato, M., Forte, G., & Trovato, M. (2019). DC-microgrid operation planning for an electric vehicle supply infrastructure. Applied Sciences, 9(13), 2687.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments. As per the reviewer’s comment, we have included the introductions and discussions about the DC-AC hybrid microgrids in the introduction part. Additionally, we have improved the reference list by adding the below mentioned references ([9], [10], [11], [12], [13]).

Cited References

[9] Aluisio, Benedetto, Sergio Bruno, Luca De Bellis, Maria Dicorato, Giuseppe Forte, and Michele Trovato. "DC-microgrid operation planning for an electric vehicle supply infrastructure." Applied Sciences 9, no. 13 (2019): 2687.

[10] Chen, Mingxuan, Suliang Ma, Haiyong Wan, Jianwen Wu, and Yuan Jiang. "Distributed control strategy for DC microgrids of photovoltaic energy storage systems in off-grid operation." Energies 11, no. 10 (2018): 2637.

[11] Sahoo, Saroja Kanti, Avinash Kumar Sinha, and N. K. Kishore. "Control techniques in AC, DC, and hybrid AC–DC microgrid: a review." IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics 6, no. 2 (2017): 738-759.

[12] Wang, Peng, Dan Wang, Chengliang Zhu, Yan Yang, Heba M. Abdullah, and Mohamed A. Mohamed. "Stochastic management of hybrid AC/DC microgrids considering electric vehicles charging demands." Energy Reports 6 (2020): 1338-1352.

[13] Azeem, Omar, Mujtaba Ali, Ghulam Abbas, Muhammad Uzair, Ayman Qahmash, Abdulmohsen Algarni, and Mohammad Rashid Hussain. "A comprehensive review on integration challenges, optimization techniques and control strategies of hybrid AC/DC Microgrid." Applied Sciences 11, no. 14 (2021): 6242.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

thanks for your reply!

Author Response

Thanks for your review and advice

Reviewer 4 Report

No comment. 

Author Response

Thanks for your review and advice