Design and sizing of mobile solar photovoltaic power plant to support rapid charging for electric vehicles

Abstract

Existing DC fast-charging stations are experiencing power quality issues such as high harmonics in the line current, poor power factor in the input supply, and overloading of distribution transformers, due to the dynamic behavior of charging patterns when it is connected to the power grid. Most of the recent works involve the usage of renewable energy sources to mitigate the issues on the distribution grid. In order to design a mobile plug and play DC fast charging station, solar energy is the best and viable solution to carry out. In this paper, plug and play solar photovoltaic power plant to charge electric vehicles (EVs) is proposed and modelled using MATLAB/Simulink software. The proposed system can act as a mobile power plant. The controller allows the system to charge the battery, whenever there is abundant solar energy. Incoming EVs will be charged directly from the system battery where the charger acts as a rapid charging system. The proposed system can meet the concept of Solar Photovoltaic Rapid Charging Stations (SPRCS), which shows that 80% of charge can be fed to an EV in 10.25 min. © 2019 by the authors.