An Open Microcontroller Implementation of Control Pilot Communication

The adoption rate of electric vehicles is continuously growing, leading to cleaner and more efficient transportation systems. There are also challenges caused by this increase, such as a higher impact on the energy grid or the need for better electrical vehicle supply equipment for facilitating the charging operation. Most car manufacturers include an in cord-control and protection device with a newly purchased electric vehicle for charging its battery. The control pilot plays a central role within such devices and represents a way to implement the communication between an electric vehicle and the charging equipment. It is used for transmitting the charging current information and the state of the charging session through an 1 kHz pulse width modulated signal. The current paper presents the design, implementation, and testing of the control pilot communication using commercially available off-the-shelf parts. Testing showed that the developed system correctly determines the states of the vehicle during charging and sends the appropriate information in this time. The used software and hardware components lead to a simplified architecture and reduce manufacturing time.