A Solar PV-Small Hydro Energy Conversion System Powered Charging Infrastructure

The deployment of microgrids locally comprising of renewables and energy storage elements offers an ideal solution for the electric vehicles (EV’s) to charge via renewables and thereby reducing dependency on the utility grid. This work explores the small hydro power and solar power to charge the electric vehicles and also to provide power to the home loads. The solar photovoltaic (SPV)-small hydro energy conversion (SHEC) based charging infrastructure (CI) incorporates AC as well as DC charging stations. The SPV-SHEC-CI operates in standalone and grid modes and a synchronization controller is incorporated to provide seamless transfer between the modes. The power conditioning unit (PCU) is used to eliminate harmonics as well as to meet the reactive power of loads. A TOGI-DCR-FLL is utilized to extract the active constituent of load current. The voltage and frequency controllers are implemented to regulate the voltage and frequency separately whereas, the harmonics injected by the home loads and EV loads are eliminated by the PCU. The implemented control shows improved power quality and the total harmonic distortion (THD) well within limits as prescribed by the IEEE-519 standard.