Modified Quadratic High-Gain DC–DC Converter for Solar-Powered EV Charging Systems: Simulation, Hardware Prototype, and CHIL-Based Real-Time Validation

The paper presents a modified design of a quadratic boost DC-DC converter, specially designed for electric vehicle (EV) charging with high voltage gain, low component count, reduced switching stress, and enhanced overall efficiency. Further, a 2-stage constant current (CC) charging approach is developed for a solar-powered EV charging system. This work provides a detailed quadratic layout with boosting of the input voltage, steady-state operations, and inductor current conduction states. Additionally, it includes mathematical analysis considering non-ideal conditions, parameter design criteria, and performance comparison of the proposed converter with existing ones. The converter’s performance is initially validated through MATLAB/Simulink simulations for a 3-kW power level. Afterward, the proposed topology is integrated into a PV-powered EV battery charging architecture. A feedforward neural network-based MPPT algorithm is implemented to extract solar power effectively. To enhance battery health, a 2-stage CC charging approach is applied where the charging current is dynamically adjusted with battery state of charge (SOC). To investigate the behaviour of the system under varying irradiance, simulations and real-time implementation on the OPAL-RT (OP-4512) platform under Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop (CHIL) with Texas Instruments (TI-F28379D) controller are conducted. Also, a 100 W scaled-down converter prototype is built to test its feasibility and efficacy under diverse conditions. The experimental efficiency is obtained as 95.6%. The resemblance among the experimental and simulation results, together with the results achieved in the CHIL environment, confirms the practical feasibility of the converter and establishes the proposed system as a prospective solution to intelligent solar-integrated EV charging infrastructure.