| Description |
In this project,
- students will start by simulating the vehicle to load (V2L) operating mode of an electric vehicle. In this mode of operation, the electric vehicle’s battery is used to power up a house for emergency loads or to reduce the peak load. This could be during a power outage or just using the electric car as a power source during high-electricity demand periods to reduce the electricity bill. The purpose is to generate the gating pulses for the inverter and determine what kind of output signals students should expect.
- students should show simulation results using some of the solar house appliances as a load and the Nissan Leaf’s battery as a power source. The battery voltage of the electric car is 400 VDC, and the output voltage of the inverter is around 120 VAC. The loads are a laptop, a personal computer, a Wi-Fi router, a phone charger, one or two small fluorescent lamps, a microwave, and an office refrigerator. They can be powered up individually, or together. In total, the loads are 2.5 - 3 kW. Since the car’s battery provides DC power and the loads are of an AC type, a power inverter interface is needed. The student’s role is to determine all the accessories required to connect the whole system, build the control circuit of the car inverter, and generate the firing signals for the inverter using a sine pulse width modulation technique. For this, students need to be familiar with PSIM software.
- Students are expected to draw a detailed electrical wiring diagram of the system. Also, they should specify and purchase all the power and control components needed to connect the vehicle to the house taking into consideration the power ratings of the actual system.
- For implementation, and taking into consideration the safety requirements, the testing of the design will be done at a scaled-down battery voltage of 24 or 48 VDC to power up the house loads through a transformer and filter. The filter design must be done for the full rated power but the testing will be done at the reduced voltage. Students can use a DSP microcontroller to control the switching signals of the inverter. For this, students need to be familiar with power electronic inverters and microcontroller coding. However, the control circuit of the inverter should be fully compatible to power up the 400 VDC – 110 VAC inverter of the full-scale system. At a later stage, a postdoc or a senior Ph.D. student should be able to test the designed control circuit and filter of the inverter at the solar house to verify the functionality of the design on the actual full-scale system.
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