Battery Charger With PFC
Battery Charger With PFC
Battery Charger With PFC
Abstract – A single stage AC-DC topology with power factor power factor rectifier. Desired features for battery charger
correction is proposed for battery charger applications. Desired such as low cost, fast charging, charge profile
features for battery charger such as low cost, fast charging, programmability, high efficiency and high reliability are fully
charge profile programmability, high efficiency and high matched by means of the proposed solution. This topology is
reliability are fully achieved by means of proposed solution.
superior to conventional ferro-resonant regulation technique in
Additionally, its multiphase operation configuration provides
easy power scaling. The proposed approach is superior to the following points of comparison: (a) competitive
conventional ferro-resonant regulation widely used for EV manufacture cost; (b) programmability enabling optimum
(Electrical vehicle) charger applications. It is especially suitable charge profile implementation leading to high battery energy
to low cost and high power applications. The feasibility and throughput and long service life; (c) quiet, neither acoustic nor
practical value of the proposed approach are verified by the electrical noise, it complies with IEC555 harmonic current
experimental results from a 1 kW product prototype. standards; (d) multiphase-able operation providing easy power
scaling and fast charging.
Ι. INTRODUCTION
ΙΙ. SINGLE STAGE POWER-FACTOR-CORRECTED CHARGER
Battery chargers for consumer and industry markets must be
precise in function and reliable in operation at reasonable A. Proposed Approach
manufacturing cost. As a low cost and simple solution, ferro-
resonant voltage regulation technology has been widely used
D1 D2
in battery charger for EV for decades. This solution relies on L1
the magnetic properties of transformer to regulate AC voltage. TX1
A
Regulating transformers operate on a resonant principle. The Battery
Vac D3 C1
resonant network added to the transformer consists of a
capacitor and inductor connected in parallel, which in turn is B
connected in series to the load. The semi-square wave output M1 M2
of the transformer is well suited to rectification. The inherent
current limitation also guarantees safe operation of battery
charger. However, the ferro-resonant transformer is much
larger physically than an equal power rate 2 winding Fig. 1. Proposed single stage power factor corrected battery charger
transformer, the price also, is more than a nominal type
transformer. The ferro-resonant battery charger is inefficient
and particularly sensitive to frequency changes. It produces Fig. 1 illustrated the proposed single stage charger
acoustic noise, can interact with SMPS to produce transients approach. In this approach, a LF line transformer is used to
and electrical noise on the output, and distort AC power to provide safety isolation and step down the line voltage. A
extremely high levels. Moreover, traditional ferro-resonant unity power factor rectifier [1] then is adopted to charge the
battery chargers tend to excessively overcharge the battery battery with rectified sinusoidal waveform current. With step-
banks due to an old formula of change in voltage over change down line transformer, conventional two-stage topology, PFC
in time. plus DC-DC converter, is no longer necessary. A single stage
two-switch-type power factor rectifier can be implemented for
To develop a high performance battery charger with a battery charger application to achieve high efficiency.
competitive cost to ferro-resonant charger, this paper Furthermore, Schottky diodes and relatively low voltage
introduces a novel power-factor-corrected single stage MOSFETs can be used for the secondary power factor
economical AC-DC topology for lead-acid battery charger rectifier, resulting in low conduction losses. Since all power
applications. It is a micro-controlled boost-driven AC-DC parts and control circuits are referenced to the low voltage
B. Principle of Operation
D1 D2
L1
D1 D2 D1 D2 TX1
L1 L1
A
Battery
A A Vac D3 C1
Battery B
Vac B C1 Vac B C1
M1 M2
M1 M2 M1 M2
L4981B
Current
M1 M2 M1 M2 Regulator
I- control
(c) (d) I ref
K
Fig. 2 Operation Modes A
2 Voltage
Low Pass AB/C B Regulator
Filter C
Fig. 2 illustrates the various operation modes for the V ref
proposed topology. At any given instant, only two
semiconductor device drops exist in the power flow path. Fig. 3 Simplified power stage and control block diagram
When the input AC voltage is positive, inductor L1, switch
M1 and diode D1 constitute the conventional boost PFC In order to obtain unity power factor, a synchronous signal
circuit (Fig. 2 (a) & (b)). M2 is always on during this interval must be provided to the PFC controller for voltage scaling and
to decrease the conduction losses. Fig. 2(a) shows the current current shaping. The synchronous signal must be a rectified
flow when the input AC voltage is positive and the switch M1 sinusoidal waveform referenced to the negative terminal of the
is closed. Input current flows through switch M1 and back output capacitor. Instead of using isolated voltage sensor [4]
through switch M2. At the same time, the bulk capacitor or a small insulation transformer [1,3], a simple low pass RCD
discharges and supplies current to the load. Fig. 2(b) shows filter (Fig. 4) can retrieve the synchronous signal from the
the situation when input AC voltage is positive and the switch Drain to Source voltage of MOSFET M1 and M2. The
M1 is open. Current flows through Diode 1, the capacitor and retrieved synchronous signal is also sent to the micro-
load, and back through switch M2. Similarly, when the input controller for input voltage measurement.
AC voltage is negative, inductor L1, switch M2 and diode D2
constitute the PFC circuit (Fig 2 (c) & (d)), and M1 keeps on A current sensing transformer AC-1015 from Talema is
during this negative AC voltage interval. To achieve high used to monitor the input current. Transient Voltage
efficiency further, some ZVT network [3,4] can be Suppressor D3 in Fig. 3 is used to clamp the output voltage if
implemented to reduce the switching losses. These types of the batteries under charging are unplugged during charging
D. Further Improvement:
The proposed topology provides us a low cost solution for
battery charge applications. Some additional work can
improve the approach further in terms of cost. By winding
primary and secondary windings spaced apart on a bobbin
with 2 chambers, a leakage-field-transformer [5] can be
applied to integrate the normal line transformer TX1 and boost
inductor L1 (Fig. 1). This approach will reduce the cost and
make charger more compact. For the control circuit, the
function of the PFC chip L4981B also can be implemented in
micro-controller, thus reducing the cost further. Due to
developing time limitation, these two cost saving solution are
not accomplished with our prototype and left for future
development.
Fig. 6. Waveforms for input voltage (cha. 1) and current (cha. 2, 10A/div)
Fig. 7. Waveforms for output voltage (cha 1) and current (cha 2, 20A/div)
Fig. 6 shows the input voltage and current at full load. Fig.
7 shows the output voltage and current, and Fig. 8 shows the
Fig. 5. 36V Battery Charger Prototype implemented optimum charging profile for lead acid battery,
which leads to high battery energy throughput and long
service life. The battery bank was discharged about 150Ahrs.
To verify the operation and performance of the proposed The charger returns 170Ahrs to the battery bank in less than
approach, a 1kW 36V battery charger prototype was built and 11 hrs. These figures simply confirm the superiority of the
tested (Fig. 5). The prototype was used to charge 6×6V lead- developed charger with the proposed approach to ferro-
acid batteries. The measured efficiency at 115Vac input resonant charger.
30 15 42 60
Voltage (V)
Current (A)
40 50
20 10
38 40
10 5 36 30
34 20
0 0
32 10
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
30 0
Time (mins) 0 50 100 150 200 250
Time (min)
Fig. 8. Implemented charger profile for 36V lead acid battery bank
Fig. 10. Implemented 3φ charger station (3kW) charging profile
B. Multiphase Operation for 36V lead acid battery bank
The last advantage of the proposed topology is that the
developed charger can be operated in parallel to provide high IV. CONCLUSION
charging capacity. Distributing chargers evenly on each phase
A novel economical single stage power factor corrected
of a 3φ power line and tying the output terminals together
charger topology has been presented. Operation, features, and
comprise a three-phase power factor corrected low cost
practical values of the proposed approach were illustrated and
charger station with triplen charging capacity. Thus multiple-
verified by the experimental results from a 1kW prototype.
triple configurations can provide high level easy power scaling
Distinctive advantages make the proposed approach very
and fast charging. The load of each charger is automatically
suitable for high power EV battery charger applications.
balanced since the charger works as a micro-controlled current
source. Therefore, the balance of each power line phase is
The proposed topology only consists of a normal line
guaranteed. Fig. 9 shows the charger current of a 3kW 3φ
transformer followed by a two-switch-type power factor
charger station, which consists of three proposed battery
rectifier. Desired features for battery charger such as low cost,
chargers. Fig. 10 shows the programmed charging profile for
fast charge, charging profile programmability, high efficiency
the charger station.
and high reliability are fully achieved by means of proposed
solution.
REFERENCE:
[1] P. N. Enjeti and R. Martinez, “A high performance single-phase rectifier
with input power factor correction,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol.
11, No. 2, Mar. 1996, pp311-317
[2] UL 1564 Standard for Industrial Battery Chargers.
[3] A. Souza and I. Barbi, “A new ZVS-PWM unity power factor rectifier
with reduced conduction losses,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 10,
Nov. 1995, pp746-752
[4] J.G. Cho, J.W. Won, H.S. Lee, “Reduced conduction loss zero-voltage-
transition power factor correction converter with Low Cost,” IEEE
Trans. Industrial Electron., vol.45, No. 3, Jun. 1998, pp395-400
[5] Olsson, B.G., “Normalized (pulse-) charging,” Telecommunications
Energy Conf., INTELEC ’92., 14 th International, 1992, pp548-550