By Haziq Ahmad, Final year student of Electrical Engineering at Sharif College of Engineering and Technology
With depleting fuel sources, rising prices, and severe climatic conditions caused by vehicle carbon emissions are backing the widespread use of transportation electrification and causing the adoption of electric vehicles. Pertaining to this, the need for efficient and convenient charging solution is becoming increasingly vital. The current static charging infrastructure has limited scope of operation in terms of charging time, space requirement, compatibility, slot availability, and downtime. This project aims to address these challenges by creating a dynamic wireless charging system that allows EVs to charge efficiently without requiring precise alignment with charging pads and addresses the considerable solution to how not to skip the charging pads at higher speed. By the integration of Class-DE converter, the system will achieve high efficiency while reducing power losses, energy consumption, and charging time. This technology has the potential to revolutionize EV charging, making it more user friendly, efficient, and accessible. Ultimately promoting the widespread adoption of electric vehicles and contributing to a greener and more sustainable future.
Science and technology are ever evolving. All this advancement aims to make life of people easier. But as the global acceptance grows, new challenges are born.
Cars were undoubtedly a breakthrough in commutation and it was rapidly accepted by mankind. But as the usage of motor vehicles grew, it generated some other complications such as global warming. The carbon emissions that are majorly produced by combustion engines are considered to be the core problem of this global crisis. And due to large scale usage of fossil fuels like petroleum, earth’s natural resources are considered to be on the verge of depletion. That is when the technology decided to move towards electrified transportation and minimizing the usage of conventional combustion engines. And amidst its flight towards its zenith, challenges like range anxiety during long travels, availability of charging stations, down time for charging and compatibility of charging stations are hindering the global acceptance of electrified transportation.
DWPT aims to increase the global acceptance of EVs by minimizing the limitations regarding all of the problems mentioned above. With the unique feature of position tolerance, a car getting charged while running on the road will greatly reduce the range anxiety of users along with easing them about the availability and compatibility of charging stations. This way, we aim to contribute to a clean and green society by reducing carbon footprint and helping the users in eliminating their concerns about EVs resulting in global acceptance of electrification of transportation.
Our project objectives are to design, develop and demonstrate a dynamic wireless charging (DWC) system for electric vehicles along with position tolerance as EVs will be running over the road and catching misalignments. The supporting objective is to equip it with system smartness and vehicle-to-load (V2L) technology.
Without safety and smartness, this technology seems boring. Hence, to get interest back, we are employing a handful of smart features to make it look promising. This includes RFID-based smart entry for EVs on the E-Road (Electric Road). To drive on E-road, a smart RFID-based card will be scanned, and the cost will be deducted from that. Next is short circuit and overload protection, which will trip the respective coil in case of fault triggering. The IoT-based battery state monitoring system is also incorporated, so the user can keep updated about the charging parameters. To ensure energy security and reduce energy leaks, specific logic is developed that only gets activated when it senses the EVs coming. And finally, the intelligent street lighting system is embedded, which will be running at 30%, and when it detects the vehicles coming, it will raise its brightness accordingly.
Beside all of the above discussion, V2G technology is on its all-time boom. We are also considering a vehicle to load (V2L) technology that requires a bidirectional converter and an inverter to meet battery and home load requirements.
This project is entirely mapped upon many sustainable development goals (SDGs) which are implied for safe and environment friendly growth of developing as well as developed countries. And once done, it can have many utilizations like public transportation such as electric buses and trams, logistics and freight where electric truck can charge while on route which reduces downtime and supports green logistics. It can be incorporated on highways to extend the range of electric vehicles and encourage EV adoption for long-distance travel and also electric shuttle services on university campuses can utilize dynamic charging to enhance sustainability initiatives.
