Design of an Isolated Onboard Plug-in Electric
Vehicle Charger
2021 7th International Conference on Electrical Energy Systems (ICEES) | 978-1-7281-7612-3/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICEES51510.2021.9383717
Angia Sara Daniel,
Department o f Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Amrita School o f Engineering, Coimbatore,
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India.
angi2008.daniel@gmail.com
Abstract—With the expanding worry over the earth and ever-
stringent outflow guidelines, the electric vehicle has been
researched as an effective type of transportation. Battery
charger topologies in Electric vehicle assume a significant job to
expand the penetration of Electric Vehicles (EVs). In this paper,
an onboard plug-in battery charger for electric vehicle is
developed supporting SEPIC and resonant inverter or LLC
topology suitable for neighborhood electric e-bikes with a
battery pack of 48V. With this charger architecture, a 1KW
charging topology as a prototype is designed to charge a 48V Li-
ion battery. The on-board charger is simulated using
MATLAB/Simulink and the result is validated.
Keywords—Electric Vehicle, Lithium-ion Battery, Battery
charger, SEPIC converter, LLC resonant converter.
I. In t r o d u c t io n
As the trend in transportation is moving towards electric
vehicle, the internal combustion engine may be vanished at
one moment o f time due to fuel being extinguished in near
future. The wide scale operating electric vehicle could acquire
critical variations in the society, terms o f not just the
innovations is use for individual transportation, yet in addition
moving the economies from petroleum and lessoning the
natural impression o f transportation [1], New natural worries
over the measure of poisons spilled into the environment every
day by internal combustion engine (ICE) which have become
an incredible inspiration for the utilization o f vehicles
operated electrically [2], Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles
(PHEVs) speaks to the most encouraging way to deal with
electrification of a critical segment of the transportation
segment [3],
Electric vehicle battery (EVB) charger topologies assume
an essential job to expand the infiltration o f EVs. Since
charging time is o f the substance, hybrid and electric vehicles
need an exceptionally efficient on-board AC/DC charger that
flaunts a high power density and fits the constrained space and
weight necessities [4], On-board chargers are the favoured
configuration for PHEV’s due to their adaptive nature for
household charging and reduced concerns for battery heating
[5], From the structure perspective, the types of on-board
battery chargers are single-stage interfaced with the pack of
battery and two-stage topology on the network side and
converter which is DC-DC on the battery-side [6 ],
Unidirectional charging of the battery is first step since it
limits hardware necessities and will as a rule decline battery
debasement [7], Two stage AC/DC converters have been
comprehensively utilized in installed battery charging
structures for PEVs [8,9], The charger normally contains
double phases; one is first stage for correction of AC input
voltage and second-stage DC/DC converter for voltage
guideline and galvanic confinement.
978-1-7281-7612-3/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on June 15,2021 at 14:00:10 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
K R M Vijaya Chandrakala,
Department o f Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Amrita School o f Engineering, Coimbatore,
Am rita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India,
k r m v ij aya@cb.amrita. edu
Topologies with front end converter as boost and are
usually adopted due to many reasons like less complexity in
the design and a low Total Harmonic Distortion(THD) [9-10],
Chargers with power factor converters has achieved beyond
90% efficiency but w.r.t to medium or low loads the
performance is not appreciably good. The other disadvantages
by using boost type converters are fluctuation LLC converter
operating frequency from the resonant frequency causes
reduction in the conversion efficiency and increases the
circulating losses. Therefore; boost type topologies are not a
good option, in light o f the fact that the differing DC link
voltage may dip below the input voltage on the grid. Thus, a
front end converter which acts as both buck and boost the
voltage input, fit for giving a wide DC interface voltage.
Subsequently, the LLC converter would help to increase the
handling capability throughout the period o f battery pack
voltage. [ 1 1 ],
Therefore, the topology for charger adopted in this paper
includes SEPIC converter as front end converter and LLC
converter as rear end converter. The selection of LLC
converter is due to its advantages which would provide short
circuit protection, galvanic seclusion and soft switching
mechanism. The following sections discuss the equivalent
circuit o f the proposed topology, its design and results
obtained using MATLAB/Simulink.
II. E l e c t r ic V e h ic l e O n -B o ar d Ch a r g er
The on-board plug in electric vehicle charger designed in
this paper is based on SEPIC and LLC resonant [11]
converters. The SEPIC converter is one o f the DC/DC
converters which is capable of making output voltage greater,
lower or equal to that o f the input voltage. Therefore; SEPIC
converter is taken into consideration as it is best suited for
front end converter. Schematic diagram o f the proposed plug-
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram o f the electric vehicle charger
The voltage input is 230V to the charger. The DC link
voltage serves as input to supply as input to the rear end
converter which is the LLC converter. The LLC converter [7]
acts as the second stage DC/DC converter [ 8 ] which regulates
the voltage and is capable o f providing galvanic seclusion. A
full bridge LLC converter is proposed which consists of
switching bridge, resonant tank, transformer rectifier circuit
and an output capacitor. The proposed onboard charger is
implemented to charge a 48V, 20Ah battery. The equivalent
circuit diagram of the proposed charger is highlighted in Fig.
2.
147
 B. Proposed charger design o f LLC Converter
From the Fig.2, SEPIC converter DC link voltage is
applied to the isolated LLC converter for charging o f the Li-
ion battery.
The resonant peak current is calculated as shown in (7);
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit diagram of two stage charger topology with
SEPIC and LLC converters

III. D e s ig n Of Se p ic Co n v e r t er Fe d LLC Co n v e r t er
With a selection o f 100kHz switching frequency, resonant
In this section; 1KW on-board charger fed from AC mains capacitor is calculated using,
is presented. The input voltage to the proposed charger is grid
voltage o f 230V, single phase, 50Hz. The AC voltage is Cr Ir p
2nFs
( 8)
rectified using diode bridge rectifier. In this rectifier
application, it is not necessary the rectified output voltage be In order to achieve voltage gain, inductance ratio o f ‘Lm’ and
greater than grid voltage as voltage gain for a SEPIC converter ‘Lr’ is taken as 0.3, and therefore; the resonant inductor and
could be greater than unity or lesser than unity [ 8 ], This magnetizing inductor can be determined from (9) and (10),
benefits in getting a wide range ofD C link voltage in the case
o f rectifier applications [ 8 , 1 1 ], Cnfs)2Cr (9)
A. Proposed charger design o f SEPIC converter Lm = 0.3Lr (10)
Referring to Fig.2, at the capacitor output, voltage ripple The designed inductor is used in the proposed two stage
could be neglected and the corresponding duty ratio is charger topology. The specifications o f the charger topology
mentioned in (1), are tabulated in Table. I.
D = , Vou\------ (1)
Vm \ S i n a t \ + V out Ta b l e I. Spec if ic at io n s o f Pr o po s ed Two St a g e Ch ar g er
Where ‘Vout’ is the output voltage, ‘Vm’ is the grid voltage Quantity Parameter
[6],
Input Inductor 150qH
For the selection o f the inductors ‘L i’ and ‘L 2 ’ , the ripple Output Inductor 550qH
current is taken as 25% o f the maximum input current [8]. The
SEPIC Capacitor 100qF
ripple current flowing in both ‘L i’ and ‘L 2 ’ is calculated as in
DC link Capacitor 100qF
(2);
Duty Rato 0.13
M = Iln * 25% (2) Magnetizing Inductor 31.7qH
Resonant Capacitor 20nF
The inductor values is calculated as in shown in (3);
Resonant Inductor 107.6qH
(3) Input voltage 230V

The values for both the inductors for a switching
frequency o f 500kHz is found to be 150pH. The value for
coupling capacitor is determined based upon the RMS current
through the capacitor which is calculated using (4);
The capacitor value o f the SEPIC is calculated as shown in
(5);
Output voltage 48V
The designed values are used in developing the charging
topology to charge a 48V, 20Ah e-bike vehicle. As the charging
infrastructure is the forefront requirement o f establishing in the
optimal places. This design o f charging topology would help the
electric vehicle to smoothly charge as per the requirement. The two
stage converter would help to lower the T H D level which could be
seen in the results section as discussed.

C, = ZoDmox (5) IV. Sim u l a t io n Re s u l t s

AVclFsw
Where;’ I0 ’ is the output current,’ Fsw ‘ is the switching
frequency o f 500kHz and ‘AVc l‘ is the ripple voltage across
the capacitor ‘C i’ . A very small ripple voltage, i.e., 5% is
assumed and the value for capacitance is calculated using (5).
In a SEPIC converter, when the switch Si is ON, the inductor
starts charging and the output capacitor supplies the output
current. As a result, the capacitor undergoes larger ripple and
therefore; it should be designed in such a way that it
withstands larger ripple current [8], The output capacitor is
calculated as mentioned in (6),
The simulation o f the on-board two stage charger shown
in Fig. 3 with the specifications as calculated shown in Table
I is developed in M ATLA B/ Simulink which is tested on a
48V battery output current and voltage responses o f the
SEPIC converter. Peak current o f 7A is obtained at the output
and is shown in Fig. 3 (a). The SEPIC converter here steps
down the rectified voltage to 33.4V which is shown in Fig. 3
(b) and Fig. 3 (c) shows the square waveform generated by
the switching bridge o f the LLC converter which excites the
resonant tank o f the LLC converter. A resonant sinusoidal
current o f amplitude 0.5A flows through inductor which is
shown in Fig. 3 (d). The nominal value o f the electric vehicle
battery pack is 48V. The battery with initial SOC 30% is
getting charged from the charger and its parameters are noted.

148 2021 7th International Conference on Electrical Energy Systems (ICEES 2021)

Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on June 15,2021 at 14:00:10 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
The nominal LLC converter input and output voltage are this charging topology, low voltage level batteries especially
33.4V and 51V respectively as shown in Fig. 3 (e). the ones present in neighborhood electric bikes can be
charged.

V. Co n c l u s io n

0.02038
This paper presented a topology for an onboard plug-in
Time (seconds)
electric vehicle charger based on SEPIC and LLC converter.
a) Output current
This can be well utilized for applications towards onboard
charging of electric vehicles that is capable of vehicle to grid
connectivity. The simulation is implemented with an on­
board charger charging 48V, 20Ah e-bike lithium ion battery.
The LLC converter efficiency can be increased as a future
work by implementing a variable DC link control approach
which maintains the switching frequency o f the LLC
converter near to the primary resonant frequency relating to
the most maximum efficiency point.

Re f er enc es

[1] M. Kebriaei, A. H. Niasar and B. Asaei, "Hybrid electric vehicles: An

overview," 2015 International Conference on Connected Vehicles and
Expo (ICCVE), Shenzhen, pp. 299-305, 2015.
[2] P. Y. Kong and G. K. Karagiannidis, "Charging Schemes for Plug-In
Hybrid Electric Vehicles in Smart Grid: A Survey," in IEEE Access,
vol. 4, pp. 6846-6875,2016.
0.0257 0.02572
[3] Vankayalapati B. T. Singh R. & V. K. Bussa, “ Two stage integrated
Time (seconds) on-board charger for EVs” , IEEE International Conference on
d) Resonant inductor current Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2018.
[4] Siddhant Kumar and Add Usman, “ A Review of Converter Topologies
for Battery Charging Applications in Plug-in Hybrid Electric
Vehicles” , IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IAS),
2018.
[5] Habib S. Khan, M. M. Hashmi, K. A li M. and H. Tang, “ A
0.2 0.25 0.3
Time (seconds)
Comparative Study of Electric Vehicles Concerning Charging
e) LLC converter voltage Infrastructure and Power Levels” , International Conference on
Fig. 3. Voltage and current waveforms of SEPIC and LLC converter Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT), 2017.
charging e-bike battery [6] Haoyu Wangl and Alireza Khaligh, “ Interleaved SEPIC PFC
The LLC converter is connected to the battery which Converter Using Coupled Inductors in PEV Battery Charging
Applications” , IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and
charges the battery as per the requirement. The different Exposition (APEC), 2015.
battery parameters namely voltage and SOC with time are [7] A. K. Singh & M. K. Pathak, “ An improved two-stage non-isolated
highlighted in Fig. 4 (a) and Fig. 4 (b) respectively. converter for on-board plug-in hybrid EV battery charger” , IEEE 1st
International Conference on Power Electronics, Intelligent Control and
Energy Systems (ICPEICES),2016.
[8] M. A. Peer and K. R. M. Vijaya chandrakala, “ Dual Input Interleaved
1.12 1.14 1.16 SEPIC Converter based Ripple Current Reduction in Hybrid Electric
Time (seconds) Vehicle Application,” Innovations in Power and Advanced Computing
Technologies (i-PACT), 2019.
a) SOC of battery
[9] Abhin, A., & Chandrakala, K. R. M. V., “ Hybrid Energy Storage
<Voltage (V)> System For an Electric Vehicle Powered by Brushless DC Motor, “
International Conference on Control, Power, Communication and
&ff|
ra 20 ----
~ Computing Technologies (ICCPCCT), 2018.
o ol _ [10] F. Musavi, M. Craciun, D. S. Gautam, W. Eberle, and W. G. Dunford,
> 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 “ An LLC Resonant DC-DC Converter for Wide Output Voltage Range
Time (seconds) Battery Charging Applications,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 28,
b) Voltage waveform of battery no. 12, pp. 5437-5445, Dec. 2013.
Fig. 4. Voltage and SOC of the battery by the proposed charger
[11] Krishna, V. V., Kumar, P. A., & Chandrakala, K. R. M. V.,
The charging topology using backend and rare end “Development of Hybrid Energy Storage System for DC Motor
converter helped the charging of the battery smoothly to 48V Powered Electric Vehicles” , International Conference on smart
as seen the above figure with the SOC being achieved. With structures and systems ICSSS, 2019.

2021 7th International Conference on Electrical Energy Systems (ICEES 2021) 149

Authorized licensed use limited to: Univ of Calif Santa Barbara. Downloaded on June 15,2021 at 14:00:10 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.