Bi-directional Integrated On-board Chargers for Electric Vehicles

This is an NSF funded project to develop a highly efficient, highly compact on-board charger for electric vehicles. Compared to the conventional solution which is widely adopted in industry, where the high voltage traction battery charger and the low voltage auxiliary battery charger are two independent units, this project is aiming at developing a charger which integrates the high voltage and auxiliary battery chargers together by magnetics integration. This solution has the full potential of reducing the charger weight, volume and cost by up to 50% and meanwhile remain a high efficiency which is competitive to the mainstream on-board chargers on the market. By the unique variable DC link control strategy, the efficiency over the entire output voltage range is substantially improved compared to the conventional fixed DC-link voltage control.