Feasibility Study of Wide Bandgap Devices for Parallel Hybrid Wireless Charging Systems

Inductive power transfer (IPT) has been widely adopted globally despite its high cost and intolerance to mis-alignment. Alternatively, capacitive power transfer (CPT)-based charging systems can be utilized, as they are misalignment tolerant, less expensive, and lighter. Nevertheless, the power density and efficiency of the CPT chargers are less than the IPT chargers. This paper proposes a grid connected dual-stage parallel hybrid wireless power transfer (HWPT) system to enhance power capacity and efficiency with better misalignment tolerance for electric vehicle charging applications. Also, the design and operating cost estimation process is presented by using the correlations between the cost and performance indices of wide bandgap devices. To validate the proposed system, a 3.3 kW parallel HWPT charger with a constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) charging control technique is designed and simulated on the MATLAB/Simulink platform.