A High-Density, High-Efficiency, Isolated On-Board Vehicle Battery Charger Utilizing Silicon Carbide Power Devices

Journal Article · Thu May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2013.2279950· OSTI ID:1211436

Whitaker, B; Barkley, A; Cole, Z; Passmore, B; Martin, D; McNutt, TR; Lostetter, AB; Lee, JS; Shiozaki, K

This paper presents an isolated on-board vehicular battery charger that utilizes silicon carbide (SiC) power devices to achieve high density and high efficiency for application in electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs). The proposed level 2 charger has a two-stage architecture where the first stage is a bridgeless boost ac-dc converter and the second stage is a phase-shifted full-bridge isolated dc-dc converter. The operation of both topologies is presented and the specific advantages gained through the use of SiC power devices are discussed. The design of power stage components, the packaging of the multichip power module, and the system-level packaging is presented with a primary focus on system density and a secondary focus on system efficiency. In this work, a hardware prototype is developed and a peak system efficiency of 95% is measured while operating both power stages with a switching frequency of 200 kHz. A maximum output power of 6.1 kW results in a volumetric power density of 5.0 kW/L and a gravimetric power density of 3.8 kW/kg when considering the volume and mass of the system including a case.

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AR-0000110
• OSTI ID: 1211436
• Journal Information: IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 29, Issue 5; ISSN 0885-8993
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English