Moien A. Omar1,*, J.

Electrical Systems x-x (xxxx): xxx-xxx

Marwan
Mahmoud1 Regular paper

Control of power converter used for electric vehicle

DC charging station with the capability of balancing
distribution currents and reactive power
compensation

This paper presents a control scheme of power converter used for electric vehicles DC charging station connected to a three-phase
distribution feeder. The transformer is employed to connect single-phase photovoltaic inverters and single phase loads to the main
grid. This makes the distribution transformer to work with unbalanced operations which leads to overload conditions and inefficient
operation. The proposed control scheme makes the AC/DC converter to convert the AC grid power to DC power required for charging
the electric vehicle. Moreover it makes the currents of the transformer to be balanced with unity power factor to avoid frequent
shutdowns due to overload conditions . The power converter control scheme are examined and simulated considering unbalanced
distribution feeder with single phase PV inverters and single phase loads. Simulations are performed in Matlab/Simulink to show the
effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
Keywords: DC charging station; unbalanced mitigation; reactive power compensation.

1. Introduction

Unit Due to growing concerns about climate change and environmental issues, the world starts moving away from
petroleum as the main energy source for powering our transportation system. The European commission indicated that
the total number of conventional petrol and diesel cars needs to be halved by 2030 and completely phased out by 2050
[1]. The electric vehicles (EVs) can be recharged using renewable electricity to mitigate the power demand of EV
chargers from the main grid. A study has indicated that solar power can provide the required energy for 14 - 50% of
public transportation in a medium-sized city in Europe [2, 3]. The expected widespread EV adoption will add a
significant uneven load among the phases at the primary and secondary distribution networks and overload the
transformers [4]. An unbalanced operation of the network will result in a serious increase of losses and voltage
unbalance. Furthermore, an unbalanced network can host less PV generation before the critical voltage and current
limits is reached [5]. In literature, different approaches are presented to balance the currents in the three phases. In [6],
A solution is proposed to manually switching the phase by distribution system operator (DSO) to improve the
distribution of the load across the three phases. This solution is very costly especially with more switching actions in
case the power in each phase rapidly changes, as in the case of a distribution system [7]. Alternatively, dynamically
switching residential load from one phase to another is presented in [8]. This solution is costly because it requires the
use of static transfer switches. In [9], a control scheme for a three-phase four-wire inverter to deliver negative sequence
currents based on measurements of the negative sequence voltage is developed. For the case of EV chargers and single
phase inverters the case is different than residential loads, where disconnecting the PV inverters will result in a lower
amount of energy produced and a lower revenue for their owners [7]. EV charging power curtailment can reduce the
unbalanced voltage drop but can lead to an unwanted extension of the charging time [10]. This paper presents a control
scheme for three phase four leg power converter used for DC charging station. Moreover, the converter is used for
balancing the currents to overcome overloading conditions of the feeder due to uneven currents among its three phase
wires.

2. System structure

The DC charging is considered in this study because it is faster than the AC charging. The proposed DC charging
station configuration is shown in Fig. 1, it can be seen that the proposed power converter is used as a front-end rectifier
to convert the power from AC to DC required for charging the EV. The converter is interfaced with the network through
an LCL filter and a distribution transformer; while a single DC bus feeds the battery charger. The DC/DC converter is
used to control the charging current and charging voltage required for the battery during the charging process. For
vehicle batteries, it is important to control the charging current and charging voltage to maintain the charging process
*
Corresponding author: Moien A. Omar, Electrical Engineering Department, An-Najah National University,
Nablus, Palestine, Email: [email protected]
1
Electrical Engineering Department, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine.

Copyright © JES 2010 on-line : journal/esrgroups.org/jes

 J. Electrical Systems 6-4 (2010): 466-479

within the manufacturers' recommendations. The control of DC/DC converter is beyond the scope of this paper because
this study is focusing on the control strategy of AC/DC converter.

Fig. 1 EV charging station system structure.

3. Power converter and proposed control strategy

Two types of power converters are used for unbalanced compensation of four wire connections, the utilization of a
three-leg inverter with spilt dc-link capacitor is a well-recognized approach with four-wire connections. However,
it produces distorted output voltages even with large dc-capacitors [11]. The four-leg inverter shown in Fig. 2 is
presented in several significant research for unbalanced compensation. The additional leg with two switches are
used to control the neutral current, and correspondingly the zero sequence current produced from the unbalanced
distribution system resulting in better output voltage [12,13].

Fig. 2 Four leg power converter with LCL filter

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In the three phase voltage source converter (VSC) supplying balanced active and reactive powers, the vector control
can be employed in high-performance where the current transformed in a synchronously rotating frame (abc-dq0) [14].
In case of using the VSC for unbalanced compensation, the output currents are unbalanced depending on the
unbalanced currents required to be compensated. Therefore, the output currents must be transformed to symmetrical
components [15]. Symmetrical components are generally transformed into individual positive, negative, and zero
sequence components in dq0. This is necessary to use effectively simple proportional and integral (PI) controller
[15,16]. The extraction of positive, negative and zero components are required to decompose the unbalanced measured
currents. Each measured component is considered to be the alpha component while the beta component can be obtained
by using time delay of quarter period T/4, i.e.,5 ms in case of 50 Hz line frequency as shown in Fig. 3, after getting α-β
components of each phase current the d-q transformation is obtained by equation (1) [16].

Fig.3. The delay of quarter period to get d-q for each phase

 I d  sin(t )  cos(t )   I 
     (1)
 I q  cos(t ) sin( t )   I  

The complex form of d-q frame can be obtained by equation (2)

 Id 
I d  jI q  1 j    (2)
 I q 
The positive, negative and zero sequence components can be extracted from the three complex quantities as
described in equations (3) and (4).

 ( I d  jI q ) p  1 a a 2  ( I d  jI q )a 
  1  2
  
 ( I d  jI q ) n    1 a a    ( I d  jI q )b  (3)
  3  
1 1 1   ( I d  jI q )c 
 ( I d  jI q ) z     

where I is the unbalanced currents and a is the operator with the value presented in equation (4).

a  e j 2 /3 (4)

After getting the d-q quantities of positive, negative and zero sequences of the inverter output currents (ICS) and the
feeder unbalanced currents (IF) illustrated in Fig.1. The current control loop is used to make the desired negative and
zero components of inverter currents (ICS) the same as the negative and zero components of the unbalanced feeder
currents (IF) as shown in Fig.4. The positive sequence d-q quantities are used to control the required active power to
charge the battery and the reactive power which required for reactive power compensation as shown in Fig. 5.

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Fig.4. Negative and zero sequence control loop

Fig.5. Positive sequence control loop

After the control loops and getting the values of xd and xq of positive, negative and zero sequences, these values are
converted to α-β frame by using equation (5).

 X   sin(t ) cos( t )   X d 
     (5)
 X     cos( t ) sin(t )   X q 

Then, the equation (6) is used to get the signals xa, xb, and xc , these three signals are the inputs for the carrier pulse
width modulation (CPWM) which is used in this work for converting the reference three signals into four gating signals
required to switch the four-legs inverter. CPWM is equivalent to a 3D-SVM according to [16, 17], but with an easier
implementation, and therefore it is used in this study.

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 
 1 0 1
 xa     x( p)  x (n) 
 x    1 3 
1   x ( p)   x(n)  (6)
 b  2 2
 xc     x( z ) 
 1 3 
  2 
2
1

4. Simulation results

Simulations carried out for the proposed control strategy via the computer simulation software,
MATLAB/Simulink, using the parameters listed in Table 1.

Table 1: The parameters of the proposed inverter and control loops

Item Value
The grid voltage (3Ø) 400 V
Input filter inductor 8mH
output filter inductor 4mH
Filter capacitor 30µF
Current loop controller proportional term 50
Current loop controller integral term 800 s-1
Outer loop power controller proportional term 0.02
Outer loop power controller integral term 15 s-1

The power of the PV inverters and loads as follows Table 2.

Table 2: Active power and reactive power of single phase inverters and loads

Item Active power (kW) Reactive power(kVar)

Phase a PV (P=10), Load (P=3) Load (Q=0)
Phase b PV (P=8), Load (P=2) Load (Q=4)
Phase c PV (P=5), Load (P=5) Load (Q=2)

The power required to charge the battery is the reference power Pref in positive current control loop as shown in
Fig.5, In the first simulation period (t = 0  1s), the value of Pref set to be 20 kW with negative value. In the second
simulation period (t = 1s  2s) at this time, the charging station is not used for charging the EV. Therefore, Pref is set
to be zero.
It can be observed from Table 2 that the active power generated from PV inverters amounts to 23 kW and the total
active power of the loads amounts to 10 kW. The net or excess active power is 13 kW used to charge the EV. In Fig.6, it
can be observed that, the output currents of the inverter are unbalanced, because the active and reactive powers of the
connection point are unbalanced as illustrated in Table 2. The inverter currents decreased in the second period because
the Pref is changed from -20 kW during charging the EV and becomes zero when stop charging.

Fig. 6. Inverter output currents (A)

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It can be seen in Fig.7 that, the transformer currents are balanced in both simulation periods because the inverter
compensates the unbalanced currents which approves the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. The currents in
the first simulation period are less than the currents of the second simulation period because in the first period the
transformer delivers 7 kW to the feeder and in the second period it delivers 13 kW into the grid.

Fig. 7. Transformer three phase currents (A)

The inverter active power depends on Pref value which amounts to – 20 kW in the first simulation period and in the
second period 0 as clear in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. Inverter total three phase active power (kW)

It can be seen in Fig. 9, that, the inverter delivers unbalanced active power depending on the power of positive,
negative and zero sequence. It is worth noting that the total power for the three phases amounts to -20 kW and 0 in the
first and second simulation periods respectively.

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Fig. 9. Inverter output active power for each phase (kW)

As previously explained, excess active power amounts to13 kW and the EV charging power in the first simulation
period amounts to -20 kW. Therefore, the required power from the transformer amounts to 7 kW as shown in Fig.10. In
the second simulation period, the transformer power amounts to -13 kW feedback into the grid.

Fig. 10. Transformer three phase active power (kW)

As illustrated in Table 2, the reactive power of load in phase (b) and phase (c) amount to 4 and 2 kVar respectively
while no reactive power loaded in phase (a). The total reactive power in the three phases amounts to 6 kVar which is
required to be compensated by the converter. It can be observed in Fig.11 that, the converter delivers 4 kVar and 2
kVar for case (b) and case (c) respectively. in Fig.12, the total three phase reactive power delivered from the converter
amounts to 6 kVar.

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Fig. 11. Inverter output reactive power for each phase (kVar)

Fig. 12. Inverter total three phase reactive power (kVar)

In Fig.13, it is worth noting that, the grid reactive power amounts to zero, which approves that the inverter
compensates the required reactive power and makes the transformer to work with unity power factor.

Fig. 13. Transformer three phase reactive power (kVar)

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5. Conclusions

This paper presents a control scheme for three phase four leg power converter used for DC EV charging station and
can be used to provide additional services to the main grid, mainly balancing unbalanced currents of distribution
transformer and perform reactive power compensation. The control loops of positive, negative and zero sequences are
explained with their corresponding parameters. The required charging power amounts is changed from 20 kW to zero to
show that, the converter can be used during off charging time which is a possible manner for the charging station. The
distribution feeder includes unbalanced single phase PV inverters and single phase loads of active and reactive powers
considers in this study to test the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. Simulation results show that the control
strategy is very effective to control the DC power required to charge the electric vehicles and at the same time it makes
the proposed converter to use for unbalanced mitigation and reactive power compensation which avoid frequent
shutdowns of distribution transformer due to overload conditions.

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