High Power Capacitive Power Transfer for Electric Aircraft Charging Application

This paper proposes to use the capacitive power transfer (CPT) technology to achieve high power charging of the electric aircraft. The total charging system structure is presented, including the power electronics converter, the capacitive coupler structure, and the compensation circuit. The challenges in the high power CPT technology are clarified as important guidelines to design circuit parameters. It indicates that the properties of high voltage, high current, high frequency, and long distance are required to realize a high power charging system. Meanwhile, the safety concern of field emission is a critical constraint for wireless charging. Different coupler structures are discussed, and the down-sized prototypes are designed and implemented in the lab environment to test the power transfer performance. For example, the four-plate prototype uses 200mm×150mm metal plates, and the plates are placed on the glass insulation layer. The experimental results show that it can achieve 1.53 kW power transfer with 92.1% dc-dc efficiency.