Vítor Duarte Fernandes Monteiro

Vehicle-to-Anything Application (V2Anything App) for Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a mobile information system denominated as vehicle-to-anything application (V2Anything App) and explains its conceptual aspects. This application is aimed at giving relevant information to full electric vehicle (FEV) drivers by supporting the integration of several sources of data in a mobile application, thus contributing to the deployment of the electric mobility process. The V2Anything App provides recommendations to the drivers about the FEV range autonomy, location of battery charging stations, information of the electricity market, and also a route planner, taking into account the public transportations and car or bike sharing systems. The main contributions of this application are related to the creation of an information and communication technology platform, recommender systems, data integration systems, driver profile, and personalized range prediction. Thus, it is possible to deliver relevant information to the FEV drivers related to the electric mobility process, the electricity market, the public transportation, and the FEV performance.

Assessment of a battery charger for Electric Vehicles with reactive power control

Batteries of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) have a large potential not only to provide energy for the locomotion of these vehicles, but also to interact, in dynamic way, with the power grid. Thereby, through the energy stored in the batteries, these vehicles can be used to regulate the active and the reactive power, as local Energy Storage Systems. This way, EVs can contribute to help the power grid to regulate the active and reactive power flow in order to stabilize the production and consumption of energy. For this propose should be defined usage profiles, controlled by a collaborative broker, taking into account the requirements of the power grid and the conveniences of the vehicle user. Besides, the interface between the power grid and the EVs, instead of using typical power converters that only work on unidirectional mode, need to use bidirectional power converters to charge the batteries (G2V - Grid-to-Vehicle mode) and to deliver part of the stored energy in the batteries back to the power grid (V2G - Vehicle-to-Grid mode). With the bidirectional power converter topology presented in this paper, the consumed current is sinusoidal and it is possible to regulate the power factor to control the reactive power, aiming to contribute to mitigate power quality problems in the power grid. To assess the behavior of the presented bidirectional power converter under different scenarios, are presented some computer simulations and experimental results obtained with a prototype that was developed to be integrated in an Electric Vehicle.

Onboard Reconfigurable Battery Charger for Electric Vehicles With Traction-to-Auxiliary Mode

This paper proposes a single-phase reconfigurable battery charger for an electric vehicle (EV) that operates in three different modes: grid-to-vehicle (G2V) mode, in which the traction batteries are charged from the power grid; vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mode, in which the traction batteries deliver part of the stored energy back to the power grid; and traction-to-auxiliary (T2A) mode, in which the auxiliary battery is charged from the traction batteries. When connected to the power grid, the battery charger works with a sinusoidal current in the ac side, for both G2V and V2G modes, and regulates the reactive power. When the EV is disconnected from the power grid, the control algorithms are modified, and the full-bridge ac-dc bidirectional converter works as a full-bridge isolated dc-dc converter that is used to charge the auxiliary battery of the EV, avoiding the use of an additional charger to accomplish this task. To assess the behavior of the proposed reconfigurable battery charger under different operation scenarios, a 3.6-kW laboratory prototype has been developed, and experimental results are presented.

Impact of Electric Vehicles on power quality in a Smart Grid context

The large dependency of the imported fossil fuels and the soaring oil prices, makes essential the look for alternatives to the traditional people transportation system. The natural bet is the electric mobility, namely Electric Vehicles (EV), and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV). This way, in this paper is analyzed the potential impacts of the battery charging systems on the grid power quality, in a Smart Grid context. It is considered the current consumed, according to a typical electric consumption profile, and the voltage degradation for a large number of houses. Two different types of EV batteries chargers were considered: a traditional charger; and a smart charger with sinusoidal current consumption and unitary power factor. It presents simulation results of the integration of EVs and PHEVs in terms of power quality, and experimental results of a smart charger which was specially developed for EV charging and that allows mitigation of the power quality degradation.

Bidirectional battery charger with Grid-to-Vehicle, Vehicle-to-Grid and Vehicle-to-Home technologies

This paper presents the development of an on-board bidirectional battery charger for Electric Vehicles (EVs) targeting Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V), Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), and Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) technologies. During the G2V operation mode the batteries are charged from the power grid with sinusoidal current and unitary power factor. During the V2G operation mode the energy stored in the batteries can be delivered back to the power grid contributing to the power system stability. In the V2H operation mode the energy stored in the batteries can be used to supply home loads during power outages, or to supply loads in places without connection to the power grid. Along the paper the hardware topology of the bidirectional battery charger is presented and the control algorithms are explained. Some considerations about the sizing of the AC side passive filter are taken into account in order to improve the performance in the three operation modes. The adopted topology and control algorithms are accessed through computer simulations and validated by experimental results achieved with a developed laboratory prototype operating in the different scenarios.

iV2G Charging Platform

This paper describes an intelligent Vehicle to Grid (iV2G) Charging Platform for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles that can be used at users home, and which includes a mobile control system. The car drivers can control remotely the charging or discharging process through a mobile communication device. This mobile communication device can also gather information about charging places, their availability and the best road paths to reach them, as well as energy market prices, informing the best periods to charge the car regarding the energy costs.

Batteries Charging Systems for Electric and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Nowadays, energy efficiency is a top priority, boosted by a major concern with climatic changes and by the soaring oil prices in countries that have a large dependency on imported fossil fuels. A great part of the oil consumption is currently allocated to the transportation sector and a large portion of that is used by road vehicles. According to the international energy outlook report, the transportation sector is going to increase its share in worlds total oil consumption by up to 55% by 2030 [1]. Aiming an improvement of energy efficiency, a revolution in the transportation sector is being done. The bet is in the electric mobility, mostly supported by the technological developments in different areas, as power electronics, mechanics, and information systems.

Operation Modes for the Electric Vehicle in Smart Grids and Smart Homes: Present and Proposed Modes

This paper presents the main operation modes for an electric vehicle (EV) battery charger framed in smart grids and smart homes, i.e., present-day and new operation modes that can represent an asset toward EV adoption are discussed and proposed, respectively. Apart from the well-known grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operation modes, this paper proposes two new operation modes: home-to-vehicle (H2V), where the EV battery charger current is controlled according to the current consumption of the electrical appliances of the home (this operation mode is combined with G2V and V2G), and vehicle-for-grid (V4G), where the EV battery charger is used for compensating current harmonics or reactive power, simultaneously with the G2V and V2G operation modes. The vehicle-to-home (V2H) operation mode, where the EV can operate as a power source in isolated systems or as offline uninterruptible power supply to feed priority appliances of the home during power outages of the electrical grid, is presented in this paper and framed with the other operation modes. These five operation modes were validated through experimental results using a developed 3.6-kW bidirectional EV battery charger prototype, which was specially designed for these operation modes. This paper describes the developed EV battery charger prototype, detailing the power theory and the voltage and current control strategies used in the control system. This paper also presents experimental results for the various operation modes, both in steady state and during transients.

Collaborative Broker for Distributed Energy Resources

In this work it is proposed the design of a system to handle Distributed Energy Resources (DER), which is a new reality due to Electric Vehicles (EVs), Microgeneration (MG) and the open Electrical Markets (EM). This upcoming reality brings the need of the ‘old’ central energy control to be installed locally. For that we propose a local energy broker, responsible to handle local energy flow and to exchange energy with ‘big’ market players, and based on a collaborative approach, to promote user’s participation to increase systems knowledge. The energy broker uses an Information Communication Technology (ICT) network to establish a collaborative communication between the involved parts.

Dynamic range prediction for an electric vehicle

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have limited energy storage capacity and the maximum autonomy range is strongly dependent of the drivers behaviour. Due to the fact of that batteries cannot be recharged quickly during a journey, it is essential that a precise range prediction is available to the driver of the EV. With this information, it is possible to check if the desirable destination is achievable without a stop to charge the batteries, or even, if to reach the destination it is necessary to perform an optimized driving (e.g., cutting the air-conditioning, among others EV parameters). The outcome of this research work is the development of an Electric Vehicle Assistant (EVA). This is an application for mobile devices that will help users to take efficient decisions about route planning, charging management and energy efficiency. Therefore, it will contribute to foster EVs adoption as a new paradigm in the transportation sector.