MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

April 10, 1995.

EECS Colloquium

Grier Room, 34-401, 4:00 PM (3:30 refreshments)

Steven B. Leeb, MIT

Multirate Digital Control of an Inductively Coupled Battery Charger

This talk will describe a power electronic system for charging electric vehicle batteries. Operator safety is enhanced in this system through the elimination of ohmic contacts at the vehicle charging interface. The charger employs an inductively coupled power transfer connector and a capacitively coupled information transceiver for closing a feedback loop on charging current. A novel, large signal linear, multirate digital controller for the charging current permits the charger to track and deliver a wide range of desired current trajectories for different types of batteries. This controller simultaneously ensures that the charger draws power from the electric utility with unity power factor. The analytical development of the controller and experimental results from a prototype charger will be presented.