New U.S. Patent: Integrated Onboard Chargers for Plug-In Vehicles

Professor Alireza Khaligh (ECE/ISR) and his former students Yichao Tang (EE Ph.D. 2015) and Chuan Shi (EE Ph.D. 2018) were awarded U.S. Patent 10,562,404 on Feb. 18, 2020 for “Integrated onboard chargers for plug-in vehicles.” The invention is an onboard charger for both single-phase (level-1 and level-2, up to 19.2 kW) and three-phase (level-3, above 20 kW) charging of a battery in plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The charger is integrated with the propulsion machine-inverter group residing in the PEV, and is controlled to operate in propulsion and battery charging modes. The subject integrated onboard charger provides battery charging at the rated power of the propulsion machine, does not need motor/inverter rearrangement, does not require additional bulk add-on passive components, provides an effective input current ripple cancellation, and operates without rotation of the propulsion machine during the steady state charging.

Tang is a systems engineer at Texas Instruments and Shi is a power electronics engineer at SF Motors.

Published March 27, 2020