Smart Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles in a Charging Station

With the rise in Electric Vehicle (EV) usage, the large number of distributed EV charging stations, associated energy sources and storages, if any, and EVs can be considered as microgrids. The work involves the development of smart charging infrastructure having an Intelligent Master Charge Controller (IMCC) acting as a local server that coordinates charging and discharging of EVs from the electrical grid or local renewable sources or storage through Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) in a charging station. IMCC, having a fuzzy logic controller, decides whether to charge or discharge EV based on the power required, price of energy from the electrical grid and solar energy and accordingly controls the EVSEs. The various use cases implemented in MATLAB demonstrates how IMCC responds to pricing signals and driver requirements while benefiting all the stakeholders involved. The capabilities and operation of IMCC and associated communication system are also demonstrated in a laboratory-scale hardware test setup with LPC1768 based mbed microcontroller and MCP2551 Controller Area Network (CAN) transceivers. The integration of IMCC introduces new operational possibilities and additional communication challenges and requirements in EV-EVSE-Server communication link.