System Design and Realization of a Solar-Powered Electric Vehicle Charging Station

The alarming situation of global warming leads to the full adoption of the renewable energy-based transportation system. However, their sustainable deployment at a mass level has been a challenging task. This article presents the design aspects and practical implementation of the modern solar-assisted level-2 electric vehicle charging station which is controlled by a Type-1 vehicle connector. The designed model is developed in MATLAB/Simulink environment, the circuit operation is examined and its methodological model is derived to study the parametric design features. Furthermore, the complete hardware setup has developed to test the performance of the power factor correction under the steady-state condition with respect to variation in load for the input of 3 kW, 230 Vrms at 1-phase, 50 Hz rated, and to produce a 48 V buck converter dc output. The 6.4 kW solar photovoltaic (PV) charging station, installed at the Centre of Advanced Research in Electrified Transportation building parking area in Aligarh Muslim University campus, selected as a case site. Moreover, the controller circuit is simulated in PROTEUS software and a prototype model has been tested in the lab. The study is performed on a 10 kWh lithium-ion battery pack on a bright sunny day at standard test condition of the solar panel.