Bidirectional DC-DC Converter for Incorporating Regenerative Braking in E-bikes

Recently, electric bikes (e-bikes) have proved to be an affordable mode of short distance transportation in urban areas, and hence are attracting considerable attention from customers. However, most e-bikes do not offer regenerative braking facility, resulting in a total wastage of the kinetic energy during braking as well as a shorter electric riding range. The prime objective of this work was to design and fabricate a bidirectional dc-dc converter (BDC) of power rating less than 250 W that can aid the propulsion of the e-bike as well as support regenerative braking. A non-isolated half-bridge BDC topology containing two MOSFETs, two filter capacitors and an inductor was considered for the work to minimize the size, footprint and weight of the system. The two dc-side voltages of the BDC were fixed at 12 V and 24 V. The design was simulated using NI Multisim software. Further, a hardware prototype of the BDC was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed BDC. Results show that the cost-effective BDC achieves an efficiency greater than 92 % in either direction of power flow.