ERI: A Novel Solution to Enable High-Voltage DC-Links in Electric Vehicles

ERI：一种在电动汽车中实现高压直流链路的新颖解决方案

• 批准号: 2138606
• 负责人: Hui Zhang
• 金额: $ 18.76万
• 依托单位: SUNY College at Oswego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2138606&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ERI; Novel; Solution; Enable; Voltage

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).The history of electric vehicles can be traced back to the 19th century. After the initial rise, electric vehicles declined with the mass production of cheaper gasoline cars. Until the last century, electric vehicles came back into sight due to fossil fuel shortage and environmental concerns. Besides reducing fossil fuel consumption and environmental benefits, electric vehicles offer numerous other benefits such as increasing fuel diversity, providing opportunities to integrate more renewable energy into the grid, and offering individual benefits including better driving experience and less expensive and frequent maintenance, etc. Today, the wider adoption of electric vehicles will rely on future technological advances to further reduce the cost and charging time of electric vehicles and increase efficiency, power density, and performance at the same time. One of such technologies is to use high-voltage DC links in electric vehicles. It has been reported that using higher DC voltage in electric vehicles gives higher power density, less weight, smaller components, less loss and heat, and faster charging, etc. Thus, using a high DC link voltage has become a new design trend in the electric vehicle industry. The proposed project will focus on the power conversion solutions in electric vehicles to address the challenges encountered in this transition from low-voltage DC links to high-voltage DC links. It will advance the power conversion technology for electric vehicles and other similar power conversion systems, which eventually will improve the United State’s competitiveness in the global electric vehicle market, reduce fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by promoting the adoption of electric vehicles, and increase energy diversity and foster national security and energy independence. The education components in the project will enhance engineering education and produce a highly skilled and qualified engineering workforce, attract more students in STEM learning as the future workforce in the high-need areas, and help improve the competencies of future STEM teachers. The project will also broaden the participation of underrepresented groups, particularly, first-generation college students and children in poverty. The goal of the project is to develop a cost-effective, highly efficient, and easy-retrofit inverter technique to facilitate the faster development and adoption of high-voltage DC links in electric vehicles. More specifically, the goal will be achieved by 1) developing less costly traction inverter solutions for electric vehicles with a high-voltage DC link by using four-switch three-phase inverter topology, 2) investigating and optimizing the control and efficiency of the inverters using simulations, 3) developing prototypes of the proposed inverters and demonstrating their performance as a comparison to traditional solutions to validate the proposed method, and 4) exploring the applications of silicon carbide devices in the proposed inverters for further efficiency improvement and conducting comparative studies in these methods. The project will advance the knowledge of the proposed inverters and providing mathematical insights on their analysis and control. It will also provide a novel, original, and potentially transformative solution to enable high voltage DC-links in electric vehicles, which can facilitate the faster development of high-voltage DC-link designs. The technology that will be developed in the project can also benefit many other systems such as solar and wind generation, energy storage, utilities, and industrial drive, etc. by providing a low-cost alternative. Besides, it provides the possibility to overcome the cost barrier of wide-bandgap devices and promote their applications for better efficiency and more energy savings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助，电动汽车的历史可以追溯到19世纪。在最初的上升之后，电动汽车随着更便宜的汽油汽车的大规模生产而下降。直到上个世纪，由于化石燃料短缺和环境问题，电动汽车才重新回到人们的视线中。除了减少化石燃料消耗和环境效益外，电动汽车还提供许多其他好处，例如增加燃料多样性，提供将更多可再生能源整合到电网中的机会，并提供个人利益，包括更好的驾驶体验和更便宜和更频繁的维护等。电动汽车的广泛采用将依赖于未来的技术进步，以进一步降低电动汽车的成本和充电时间，并提高效率，功率密度，性能与此同时其中一项技术是在电动汽车中使用高压直流链路。据报道，在电动汽车中使用更高的直流电压可以提供更高的功率密度、更轻的重量、更小的部件、更少的损耗和热量以及更快的充电等。因此，使用高直流链路电压已经成为电动汽车行业的新设计趋势。拟议项目将专注于电动汽车的电源转换解决方案，以应对从低压直流链路向高压直流链路过渡时遇到的挑战。它将推进电动汽车和其他类似电力转换系统的电力转换技术，最终将提高美国在全球电动汽车市场的竞争力，通过促进电动汽车的采用减少化石燃料消耗和二氧化碳排放，并增加能源多样性，促进国家安全和能源独立。该项目中的教育部分将加强工程教育，培养高技能和合格的工程人才，吸引更多的学生学习STEM，作为高需求地区未来的劳动力，并帮助提高未来STEM教师的能力。该项目还将扩大代表性不足群体的参与，特别是第一代大学生和贫困儿童。该项目的目标是开发一种具有成本效益、高效且易于改造的逆变器技术，以促进电动汽车高压直流链路的快速开发和采用。更具体地说，该目标将通过以下方式实现：1）通过使用四开关三相逆变器拓扑，为具有高压DC链路的电动车辆开发成本更低的牵引逆变器解决方案，2）使用仿真研究和优化逆变器的控制和效率，第三章开发所提出的逆变器的原型，并将其性能与传统解决方案进行比较，以验证所提出的方法，以及4）探索碳化硅器件在拟议逆变器中的应用，以进一步提高效率，并对这些方法进行比较研究。该项目将推进拟议逆变器的知识，并提供有关其分析和控制的数学见解。它还将提供一种新颖的、原创的、具有潜在变革性的解决方案，以实现电动汽车中的高压直流链路，从而促进高压直流链路设计的更快开发。该项目将开发的技术还可以通过提供低成本的替代方案使许多其他系统受益，例如太阳能和风力发电、能源存储、公用事业和工业驱动等。 此外，它还为克服宽带隙器件的成本障碍提供了可能性，并促进其应用，以提高效率和节省更多能源。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Imbalance Compensation for SVPWM-Controlled Four-switch Three-phase Inverters

• DOI: 10.1109/greentech56823.2023.10173831
• 发表时间: 2023-04
• 期刊: 2023 IEEE Green Technologies Conference (GreenTech)
• 作者: Hui Zhang