Advanced Electronic Circuit Breaker Techniques
for the Use in Electric Vehicle Charging Stations
Ivan Stoychev, Jürgen Oehm
Analogue Integrated Circuits Research Group
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Universitätsstraße 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany
Email: ivan.stoychev@ais.rub.de, j.oehm@ais.rub.de
Abstract—For a charging process of an electric vehicle it is
important that the process runs safely from the view of the
electric site. For this reason in this paper advanced electronic
circuit breaker techniques are presented, optimised for the use
in electric vehicle charging stations. In doing so the focus lies
on the continuous monitoring of the charging process related
to the temporal course of the voltage and current readings.
Therefore especially algorithms for the detection of the steady
state are proposed, which are to be applied at the beginning of
charging processes. Several trigger mechanisms for the circuit
breaker have to be implemented on an FPGA board, which
amongst other things does the signal processing for energy
measurement purpose, too. In general the usage of an FPGA as
a central part of the charging station provides wide flexibility in
configuration from various viewpoints. That is why the proposed
trigger algorithms for the circuit breakers can be parameterised
easily, and if needed changed. By implementing the proposed
circuit breaker techniques there are no significant additional costs
for the system, because typically all necessary components are
available within an electric vehicle charging station.
Keywords—charging stations, electric cars, electrical safety,
FPGA, signal processing, steady state detection, triggering tech-
niques for circuit breakers
I. I NTRODUCTION
In today’s time the environmental pollution by the transport
sector is very high. An opportunity to provide a significant
reduction of the pollution is to spread the electromobility. In
contrast to conventional vehicles, electric vehicles allow in
an easy way the use of renewable energy sources, in order
to charge their batteries. Furthermore, by a massive use of
electric vehicles within the cities the fine dust and the noise
pollution will be drastically lowered. Therefore, it is the goal
of the the German government to have more than one million
approved electric vehicles until 2020 [1], [2]. To charge the
batteries a day of such a large amount of vehicles, a sufficient
infrastructure of charging stations is necessary.
Generally, there are numerous electrical requirements for such
charging stations. In addition to the delivery of electrical
energy and the detection of the emitted quantities e.g. the
electrical safety during the execution of the entire charging pro-
cess is another important aspect, too. This is particularly true
for quick charging operations, because tremendous amounts of
energy are transferred within a very short time! If an electrical
fault occurs, both the charging station as well as the electric
vehicle may suffer damage. Therefore it is necessary to observe
the charging processes with very high temporal resolution, in
order to interrupt a charging process as soon as possible in case
of failure. E.g. typically a load shedding must be achieved at
‹,((( 
the latest after 100 ms if an error has occurred. Also in the case
of the occurrence of an over-voltage event, for safety reasons
an interruption of the charging process should be made.
In order to ensure adequate electrical safety of charging
operations, it is always a major goal to keep the technical
and financial expense as low as possible.
Currently, within a charging station the energy measure-
ment is realised with the help of a separate smart metering
device. The electrical fusing is carried out by melting fuses,
combined with electromechanical fuses. All elements are typi-
cally used in households (230/400V@50Hz). A more universal
architecture for a charging station has been proposed in [3],
[4]. As a central part it includes an FPGA board. Based on
the proposed architecture in this paper advanced electronic
circuit breaker techniques are presented. They not only replace
the concept of electromechanical fuses advantageously. The
concepts may comprehensively improve a lot of electrical
safety aspects of charging processes in general. Within the
proposed architecture by a common contactor both the charg-
ing processes are started/stopped and the charging processes
are interrupted in case of electrical faults. Therefore the data
acquisition from the current and voltage sensors is done with a
much higher data rate, as needed for acquisition of the energy
transfer values only. High sampling rates are needed for the
purpose of fault detection with a very high temporal resolution.
For the purpose of low costs and flexibility the associated
signal processing takes place in an FPGA.
Nothing significant has been reported so far from the
research field ’circuit breakers triggered by electronics’ in
combination with electric mobility. Known concepts for circuit
breakers techniques which are triggered by electronics have
been designed for triggering on certain DC levels, typically
(cp. e.g. [5], [6], [7] and [8]). The systems in [5] and [7] are
designed for over-current detection, only. The trip level of the
system in [6] is permanently fixed and can only be changed
by a new production of the chip used in this system.
The concept proposed in this paper is optimised for AC-Signals
with electrical transients. The triggering levels adapt to the
signal proceeding, and depend on the charging mode. Further
the system detects both over-currents and over-voltages.
Within the next sections the proposed method and the
whole system are described in more detail. The following
section II covers the hardware, which is used for the imple-
mentation of the techniques for the electronic triggered fuse.
In section III the programmed algorithms required for the
implementation of the method are discussed. In section IV
some exemplary results are presented. Finally, this article
finishes with a conclusion.
II. S YSTEM S ETUP
The implementation realising the proposed electronic cir-
cuit breaker techniques for charging stations, is embedded
within the energy measurement system [4]. Fig. 1 shows the
system, which is located in a charging station. It is based on the
development and evaluation ZedBoard from Xilinx. This board
features an FPGA and dual core ARM processor on a single
chip. This is essential for the presented methods, because they
are programmed on this single chip. In Fig. 1 the ZedBoard is
labelled with  A . The sensory units for the voltage and current
measurement, which provide instantaneous values with a high
data rate, are labelled with B . For the communication within
the charging station a CAN field bus is used, labelled with  C.
Fig. 1. Energy measurement system located in a charging station
Fig. 2 shows a functional view of the energy measurement
system installed in the charging station for electric vehicles.
Only the relevant components for the implementation of the
electronic circuit breaker are shown there. For the continuous
monitoring of the system current and voltage sensors are used.
These sensory units amplify or attenuate the analogue input
signals, which are converted into the digital domain with 16 bit
resolution. The galvanic isolation between the low and the high
voltage side within the system is achieved with optocoupler
units, which are placed at the output of the sensory units. The
logical bit streams at the outputs of the sensors are sent to the
inputs of the FPGA on the ZedBoard, where the further signal
processing takes place.
220/400V
Contactor Interface
Electronics
Dual ARM
Standard CAN Bus
(HPS)
U0 A
D
opto-
coupler
A opto-
I0 D coupler Programmable
Hardware
(FPGA)
Fig. 2. Partial block diagram of the measurement system with the relevant
components for the implemented techniques
There are several specifications of the advanced electronic
breaker system and particularly of the sensory units. All of
them are defined from the viewpoint of electric reliability,
safety and the required accuracy to be achieved (cf. [3], [9],
[10]). For a charging station it is important that a compre-
hensive electrical safety is accomplished during the whole
charging process. Comprehensive electrical safety means that

as much as possible faults and prohibited states (e.g. short
circuit, system overload) can be identified and a contactor can
be triggered for a fast cut off.
Especially, in the case here this means, that e.g. the error
detection of a short circuit and enforcement of load shedding
must occur in less than 100 ms. This includes the trigger
time of the contactor. For this reason the sensors and the
downstream signal processing have to fulfil the requirement
that they can sample and evaluate the current and voltage value
sequences of the ongoing charging process continuously with
a relatively high rate. This has especially the consequence that
the A/D converters within the sensors have to be sufficiently
fast. To fulfil this requirement A/D converters with a data
rate of 16 kHz were selected. Furthermore, for a sufficient
accuracy in measurement the converters must have a high
enough resolution. This is especially needed because at the
beginning of charging processes the signal sequences possesses
very high gradients typically, which have to be detected and
evaluated. The selected A/D converters have a resolution of
16 bit. This leads in total to a high bitrate at the output of the
sensors respectively at the FPGA inputs.
The output bit streams of the sensory units are coded by
a special modulation method due to IT security aspects (cf.
[10]), which is not part of this report. Within the FPGA the
bit streams are decoded and afterwards serial to parallel back
converted. Furthermore, the data from the sensors must be
decoded very fast in order to meet the time constrains for
load shedding (max. 100 ms). These parallel processes, each
with a high data rate are best placed within the dual core
ARM processors of the FPGA. Therefore the data streams are
transferred to the ARM processors first, in order to do some
preceding signal processing with high data rate.
III. T HE R EALISATION OF THE ADVANCED ELECTRONIC
CIRCUIT BREAKER TECHNIQUES
The usage of an FPGA as a part for the realisation of the
electronic circuit breaker provides flexibility in configuration
even within the application. The reprogramming can be done
to fulfil new operational requirements or to change sensor
interface features. Furthermore, with the use of an FPGA a
realisation of continuous and precise monitoring during the
hole charging process can be done. The utilised ZedBoard
environment provides in total two ARM processors with an
additional FPGA architecture on a single chip. These two
ARM cores are especially used in order to evaluate the
algorithms, which are presented in the following subsections.
A. Concept of realisation
Next the software structure for the algorithms of the
electronic circuit breaker techniques is described. After the
start of the charging station, the energy measurement system is
also ready for operation. Consequently, the advanced electronic
circuit breaker is activated. Fig. 3 shows the algorithm for the
generation of the control signal for the contactor. As can be
seen, after the start of the algorithm the measured data are read.
Next a continuous interpolating of all measured variables with
view to their time step synchronisation is done. By this step
additional errors can be kept small within the rms calculations
for the current, voltage, and power values. The calculation of
the current and the voltage rms values should preferably start
at the point of zero crossings, because this is the condition,
where the rms calculation error is as low as possible (cf.
[3]). Therefore an exact detection of the zero crossings of the
measured variables is done also. The accurate knowledge of
the signal zero crossings is also needed within the algorithms
for the detection of the settled state. In general, the calculation
of rms values is only valid when the system is in steady state.
Further, the approximate knowledge of a time point for the
steady state is an important part for the proposed advanced
electronic circuit breaker techniques, too.
In order to illustrate the proposed criteria (1) for steady
state detection Fig. 4 shows a 50 Hz sinusoidal current signal,
divided into half-waves. The signal evolves towards steady
state. The consecutive areas of a first and a second half-
wave are compared relatively with each other. When their
relative difference η is greater than 1%, the system is not
in steady state. A continuous comparison takes place until
η calculates for consecutive half-waves less than 1%. Then
system is considered to be in the steady state.
25
20




15
reading of zero crossing steady state
start interpolation 10
measured data detection detection

 



current (in A)
5

data 0
pulse generation
evaluation
   
−5

−10


Fig. 3. Block diagram of the programmed algorithm for the control of the
contactor −15

−20
The last section of the block diagram is the data evaluation −25
with the subsequent signal generation for the control of the 2.41 2.42 2.43
time (in sec)
2.44 2.45

contactor. In this part the calculation of the instantaneous and

rms values is done, which are compared with the specified Fig. 4. Sinusoidal signal with 50 Hz frequency divided into half-waves
limits, e.g. for over-current, for over-voltage, and if necessary
a signal is sent to the contactor.
IV. I MPLEMENTATION R ESULTS
B. Steady state detection In the following some results of the analysis of the ad-
In order to be very close to critical situations, if the system vanced electronic circuit breaker techniques are presented.
is not in steady state there are other limits for over-currents Fig. 5 shows a typical signal sequence of a charging current
and over-voltages than within steady state. and the related trip levels marking different sectors. A central
The next proposed criteria for the detection of the steady state separating limit for these sectors is the time point of the steady
are necessary but not sufficient in any case, in order to set the state detection. In the sector before the steady state there are
proper trip levels for the circuit breakers. Therefore different two different trip levels, which are marked with  1 and  2 .
conditions should be combined to detect a time point for steady The conditions for the change of the trip levels are shown in
state. In general, therefore the signal has to be tested, whether Table I. In the sector after the detection of the steady state is
it is mean value free: shown a third trip level marked with  3 and a short circuit
event. The conditions for this third trip level are also shown
In practice the steady state for i(t) can be considered as in Table I. As an example in Fig. 5 the continuous system
achieved, if e.g. one or both of the following conditions apply monitoring with the final reaction on a fault condition ’short
(cf. [11]): circuit’ is shown.
⎛  ⎞
 tz+1 
   200
⎜  i(t) dt  ⎟ 1
⎜  tz ⎟
100 · ⎜ 
⎜1 −  tz+2
 ⎟ = η , η ≤ 1% , 150 trip level before steady state trip level after steady state
⎟ (1)
⎝   ⎠
 i(t) dt  100
trip level change
tz+1  50
short circuit event
2
current (in A)

  0
 t+T ∗ 
   −50
100 ·  i(t) dt
 t  point of steady state detection

    = γ , γ ≤ 1% , t < tx < T ∗ . (2) −100

   
îmax (tx ) − îmin (tx ) −150

−200
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
η and γ are an estimated percentage measure for the actual time (in sec)

system state with view to the steady state of the system. ⇒

η = γ = 0 for t → ∞. tz , tz+1 , tz+2 are consecutive times
for detected zero crossings. T∗ is the actual detected period
1
time of the supply voltage of the charging station. T ∗ ≈ 50Hz .
The value for T∗ is detected before each start of a charging
process. Equation 1 seems to be more robust with view to fast
transient jumps in comparison to equation 2.
Fig. 5. Signal sequence of the charging current and the trip level
Fig. 6 shows a zoom view to the charging current and the
trip levels 
1 and 2 at the beginning of the charging process
and before the steady state detection. It can be seen that in
the first periods of the signal sequence the trip level 1 is


much higher than trip level  2 , because of the transient effect V. C ONCLUSION
immediately after switch on. At the beginning of each charging
In this paper advanced electronic circuit breaker techniques
process different trip levels are used for a close fault control,
for the use in electric vehicle charging stations have been
because the system is not in the steady state when a charging
proposed. With these techniques a state-dependent monitoring
process starts.
of the battery charging can be achieved with a high tempo-
1
ral resolution, in order to improve several electrical safety
150
trip level before steady state
aspects. Therefore voltage and current readings are observed
simultaneously. The associated signal processing is done on
100 trip level change
an FPGA board, where also the signal processing for energy
50 2
measurement is implemented. Various triggering factors may
current (in A)

cause a trigger signal to interrupt a charging process by a con-

0 tactor. Compared to conventional smart meters, which measure
−50
−100
−150
0 0.05
time (in sec)
Fig. 6. Zoom view to the charging current and the trip level at the beginning
of the charging process and before steady state
Fig. 7 shows a zoom view of the charging current and the
trip level at the point of fault condition (short circuit). It can be
seen that the trip level 3 is very close (cf Tab. I) to the signal
sequence, because the system is in steady state. Furthermore
in fault condition (e.g. short circuit) the time for load shedding
is about 25 ms.
the rms of the electric power in average every two seconds
only, the proposed system does instantaneous measurements
trip level change
of voltages and currents every 62.5 μs. Furthermore the use
of an FPGA board allows the realisation of an extensive
continuous monitoring with changing trip levels adaptive to the
0.1 0.15 0.2 load speed, in order to guarantee electrical safety within every
phase of charging processes. In comparison to conventional
fuses, which are widespread to obtain a low level electrical
safety in charging stations, the presented trigger algorithms
for the circuit breakers are very close to critical situations,
and if needed they can be changed and/or further optimised
easily.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported in part by the German Federal
Ministry of Economics and Technology (Grant 01ME12025
SecMobil).

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