Model predictive control of dual-buck balancing converters in DC charging stations

Abstract

The public increasingly demands emission-free modes of transportation, especially in congested urban areas. In order to reach the zero-emissions objective, there has been much focus on electric vehicles (EVs). One of the potential solutions that can help get regulatory agencies to zero emissions is the usage of EVs. It is crucial to have a well-developed, energy-management-based charging infrastructure in place before EVs can be put to practical use. To lessen the burden on the step-down converters in charging stations, model predictive controls (MPCs) of bipolar DC charging stations with a dual buck balancing converter have been developed. As a contribution, this work suggests an MPC based balancing technique for managing varying output loads. Performance of the proposed method is ensured by numerical simulations on MATLAB Simulink environment. Test results demonstrate that dual buck balancing converters with MPC based controllers can effectively control the unbalanced behavior of EV charging demands.