SMART EV CHARGER WITH REACTIVE POWER COMPENSATION

Abstract

The voltage drop is a serious issue that the grid is facing at present due to the penetration of a large number of EVs. For this at present STATCOMs and Capacitor banks are used, however STATCOMs are expensive and Capacitor Banks have less reliability. In this situation we came up with an idea to embed the functions of such compensating devices into the charger itself in order to increase the system reliability and reduce the use of such expensive devices. This paper illustrates the overall procedure of the prototype design of the system and an EV charger that regulates the voltage at the user end. As our final year project, we sought to develop a smart EV charger that compensates for the reactive power in the grid and maintains the voltage at the user end while charging the vehicle battery simultaneously. The project was carried out first in simulation (MATLAB) and then proceeded with hardware implementation right from the scratch. At first, we simulated the design in a Three phase system and observed the result in MATLAB Simulink. The charger works as a boost rectifier thus we were able to charge a 60 KW charger at unity power factor. While charging, the node voltage was dropped significantly low below the standard limit. Thus, in order to regulate the voltage at the node of connection. We supplied the reactive power to the grid through the charger.