Decentralized Control of a Modular Multi-Port Cascaded Boost Converter (M2CBC) for Electric Vehicle Battery Swapping Station

The swapping battery station based electric vehicle (EV) charging has proven to be attractive solution for the low power community vehicles in the urban society. The major design criteria of such systems include simpler, low cost, decentralized and modular interface for the DC-DC stage. This article proposes a DC-DC modular multi-port cascaded boost converter with a decentralized control scheme for a typical battery swapping EV charging station. The proposed converter features simpler configuration and control technique with the capability to charge multiple low voltage (LV) batteries without using any intermediate MV-to-LV step-down DC-DC stage. The proposed converter is modular and scalable in structure, and suitable for the design of swapping battery station with wide power range. Moreover, the proposed control scheme achieves modular, simpler and decentralized control. The operation of the proposed converter is verified with the help of simulation study and experimental results with three port architecture.

I. Introduction

The swapping battery stations for community vehicles are gaining popularity due some unbeatable advantages over the typical electric vehicle (EV) charging stations from the perspective of both EV and charging station [1]. Due to the presence of the swapping battery stations, need of energy storage requirement of the EV will reduce. In result on board battery weight and the space requirement will reduce, these improves EVs energy efficiency and provides more space. In addition, as the battery swapping time is significantly less compared to typical charging technology. This also improves the parking space utilization of the charging station. As a result, the swapping battery station will be capable to charge more EVs.