Feasibility Analysis of a Reduced Capacitive Wireless Power Transfer System Model for Transportation Electrification Applications

A practical approach in modeling a capacitive wireless power transfer (CPT) system that utilizes an electrostatic field for the power transfer is presented in this article. The reduced capacitance model (RCM) is derived from the conventional six capacitance model (SCM) for the CPT system in view of the large charging area applications, such as electric vehicle charging. The effect of the same side and cross-coupling capacitances diminishes when the separation distance between the same side plate pair is large enough, and the reduced capacitance model (RCM) is obtained. A bipolar capacitive-link dispersion distance proposed in this article acts as an indicator to decide the use of RCM or SCM depending on the application. Furthermore, RCM attains unity voltage gain and load-independent operation at the designed single resonant frequency, unlike the SCM, where the influence of multiple resonant frequencies is predominant. An experimental validation is performed to determine the effectiveness of the RCM.