Talk by Vishnu Mahadeva Iyer: An Approach Towards an Extreme Fast Charging Station Architecture for Electric Vehicles

Abstract – This talk introduces an extreme fast charging (XFC) station architecture concept for simultaneous charging of multiple electric vehicles (EVs). The XFC station architecture comprises of several power electronic converters interfaced to form a DC microgrid. The first part of the talk proposes the use of partial rated power electronic converters for enabling XFC. Partial power processing enables independent charging control over each EV, while processing only a fraction of the total battery charging power. System level benefits of the proposed approach include lower capital investments, lower operational costs, lower footprint and improved power and energy efficiency. Experimental results from a down-scaled laboratory test-bench are provided to validate the control aspects, functionality and effectiveness of the proposed approach. The second part of the talk addresses the system level stability challenges that exist in such an XFC station architecture-based DC microgrid. An active voltage stabilizer is proposed to stabilize the voltage oscillations in the DC microgrid. The functionality of the active stabilizer, based on a bidirectional DC-DC power converter, is elucidated and a suitable control strategy is discussed. The proposed approach is validated through analytical models and hardware results from the laboratory test-bench.

Biography  – Vishnu Mahadeva Iyer received the B.Tech degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum  in 2011, M.E degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru in 2013. He completed his Ph.D. from the NSF FREEDM Systems Center, NC State University, Raleigh in November, 2019. He worked with GE Research, Bengaluru from 2013 to 2015 as a power electronics engineer and he will be joining as a lead power electronics engineer at GE Research, Niskayuna by January 2020. His current research interests include power electronics for automotive applications, grid-connected power converters, resonant and soft-switched power converters and control and stability of power electronic systems.