Electric Vehicle Battery Charger Based on a Three-Phase to Single-Phase Matrix Converter for Inductive Power Transfer

There is a strong research effort to reduce the number of power converters and conversion stages in the case of battery chargers, especially if they are based on inductive power transfer. One of the well-known possibilities is to employ a matrix converter, as the solutions based on this topology have high power density and small volume. In this paper we show the results obtained by implementing a single-stage Inductive Power Transfer battery charger based on the Three-phase Matrix Converter. The presented solution offers a stable power flow between the grid and the Electric Vehicle (EV), enables processing of the reactive power, low Total Harmonic Distortion of the grid currents and high Power Factor (PF). The synchronization problem that exists as the consequence of two separate microcontrollers is analyzed and the solution independent on wireless communication is proposed. The proposed ideas are tested on a 3.6kW prototype, having the clearance of 80mm. The measured efficiency of the system is 95.15%, while the THD and PF are 3.2% and 0.975, respectively.