Technology development for a high power three-phase electric vehicle charger using GaN devices

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Greenhouse gas traps the earth's heat and contributes to global warming. In 2015, about 27% of the total greenhouse gas emission in U.S was from transportation. Electric Vehicles (EVs) are one way to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Major automobile manufacturers have set ambitious goals to gradually phase out the combustion engine by 2050. Due to limited driving range, EVs require frequent charging. Fast EV charging stations are one critical step to achieve widespread adoption of EVs. They can be built anywhere charging is in high demand, such as parking lots of office buildings, supermarkets and service stations. According to a recent report, the global EV Charger market is forecast to grow to more than 12.7 million units in 2020. In this project, the technologies for a 15kW 3-phase AC input EV charger will be developed using a Gallium Nitride (GaN) switch. It can charge an EV battery from 0% to 80% in 30 minutes, the key factor for wide adoption of EVs. Existing off-board 3-phase EV chargers are mostly designed with IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) or SiC MOSFET (Silicon Carbide Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) based power electronics technology, because of the high voltage requirement. A Gallium Nitride (GaN) switch can provide significantly better performance than IGBT and MOSFET and offers the opportunity to significantly improve performance. However, GaN switches have a much lower voltage rating (650V) than is required in existing design. In this project, a new power architecture will be developed for a 3-phase AC EV charger that is optimized for GaN devices. It is expected 97.5% or more full load efficiency will be achieved - the best efficiency in the world. The success of this project will demonstrate the superior performance of the GaN switches produced by the industry partner, promoting its GaN switch sales in high voltage, high power application like EV charger. It will also encourage EV ownership in Canada, making Canada the world leader in using green energy.