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What it takes to build a high performance fast Electric Vehicle Charger: Power, Display and Embedded System
Components Bureau presents a line-up of power products that can handle the requirements of electric vehicles
opportunity charger. These are usually the line-cord chargers that are sold with plug-in electric cars and are not commonly deployed for public use. These are a lot less costly to run, however, and for businesses like motels and parking lots where cars stay overnight, L1 chargers may be viable. For L1 stations, MORNSUN recommends their LD05- R2 series of power modules, allowing for compact and reliable EV chargers. AC Level 2 chargers provide 240V charging to deliver anywhere from 3kW to 19kW. This translates to around 18-28 miles of range per hour of charging. This means for L2 charging stations, it takes an average of eight hours to charge an EV. To power L2 chargers, MORNSUN recommends the LS10 series of efficient AC-DC converters. Alternatives for power supplies can include ARTESYN’s LCM3000 series, offering 3kW of output power alongside simple firmware options for battery charging applications.
W
e are truly at the beginning of the electric car age. With countries around the world introducing
mandates to cut the number of diesel and petrol cars – including the UK with the Government’s scheduled ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030 – drivers are looking towards the future dominant car technology: electric vehicles (EVs). Electric cars are by no means a new invention, with their advent dating back to as long as their fuel counterparts. But its recent explosion in the last decade has largely been the result of two companies: Tesla and Nissan. Cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model 3 place the power of the EV in the hands of the everyday consumer. In the UK, there are now 245,000 pure electric Cars on the roads, along with 515,000 plug-in hybrids – and as EVs get more affordable and as charging networks grow, this rapid market growth is only going to get faster.
10 JUNE 2021 | ELECTRONICS TODAY
Deloitte forecasts that over 25.3 million pure electric vehicles will be sold by 2030. With the rise in EV use, there will be greater strains on the countries’ charging networks, and private businesses are perfectly placed to capitalise on the growing demand for public EV chargers.
The first hurdle system designers will have to overcome when developing and deploying public EV chargers is the huge power requirement. Whilst bundled at-home chargers can plug straight into domestic mains to trickle charge EVs overnight, for electric vehicles to be a viable alternative to convenient fuel-powered cars, chargers will have to provide a lot of power to charge car batteries quickly.
There are three main types of EV charging stations: AC Level 1, AC Level 2 and DC fast charging. AC Level 1 chargers provide 120V charging to deliver up to 1.9kW of output power. This can also be known as a trickle or
L2 chargers are the most prevalent type of station currently – but they do very little to advance the rollout of electric cars. This is because for many consumers, waiting eight hours for their car to charge up is simply too long compared to the five minutes it takes to fill up a petrol or diesel tank. That’s where the next ‘level’ of charger comes in. Colloquially known as a sort of “level 3” of charging stations, Direct Current Fast Chargers (DCFCs) are designed to fill an EV battery to 90% in as low as 20 minutes. These are the types of chargers that are removing barriers to entry for EV consumers and are hugely popular, but also are infinitely more expensive to run and maintain. These charging stations can be designed to deliver up to 350kW of power.
Other power supply solutions for EV chargers include the ARTESYN iHP – whose intuitive digital control allows for seamless management of large DCFC fleets.
Displays
When designing charging stations, system creators should take into account the
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