Power Converter Configurations, Infrastructures, Smart Stations and Effective Solutions for On-Board and Off-Board Battery Chargers for Electric Vehicles

Dear Colleagues,

In recent months, automakers have been announcing plans weekly to add electric vehicles (EVs) to their line-up. Customer surveys and marketing experts say that the main obstacles to the uptake of electric cars are driving range and recharge-time anxiety: the fear that there are not enough charging stations and/or there is not enough time to recharge the vehicle to accomplish its daily business.

As is known, the real difference between EVs and vehicles with internal combustion engine is the amount of time and effort it takes to refuel them. In fact, considering a typical petrol engine, the vehicle can be refueled with a range of 500 km in a few minutes (50 liters) within a self-service pump station. Fast charge is intended as the capability to store in the batteries of the EV an amount of energy able to guarantee a range of at least 150-200 km (let us say 100 miles), corresponding to about 25 kWh (at least), in a charging period of about 10 minutes or less. The necessary average electric power is in the order of 150 kW (at least).

Further analysis must be also accomplished to evaluate the impact of these new EV charging stations in the utility grid, in terms of both power and energy demand. New efforts are needed for their successful and painless integration. The ability to provide new vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services, such as active power services and power quality services, is also of great interest. Then, power and energy management strategies and communication infrastructure are crucial for the upcoming challenges and novel opportunities in actual and future distribution grids.

This Special Issue is intended to motivate further research and development of EV chargers, refreshing the state-of-the-art, pointing out the benefits of emerging power converter topologies, defining novel modulation schemes, conceiving new telecommunication infrastructure among EVs, charging stations and grids, developing innovative power and energy management strategies, and investigating the integration of the charging stations with local (renewable) energy production and storage.

Original contributions including experimental validation are expected. The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- optimization of power flows and energy management in fast charging stations;

- integration of charging stations with renewable energy generation and storage systems;

- novel converter topologies, including multilevel and/or interleaved AC/DC and DC/DC schemes;

- original modulation strategies for power converters in fast chargers;

- on-board fast chargers (AC supply) by exploiting the traction drive inverter;

- compact and flexible on-board chargers;

- EV chargers based on wireless power transfer;

- power quality management, analysis and control;

- vehicle-to-grid services;

- telecommunication infrastructures among EVs, charging stations and grids;

- analysis and modelling of power electronic converters for EV chargers;

- control architecture based on microcontrollers, DSPs, and FPGAs.

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Grandi
Dr. Mattia Ricco
Guest Editors

Dr. Manel Hammami
Guest Editor Assistant

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