Novel Integrated Electrical Architecture for Solar-Charged Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles with on-board solar generation can offer extended driving range and lower grid charging needs than their standard electric vehicle counterparts. The main power electronic challenge in solar-charged electric vehicles (SEVs) is efficiently boosting the low solar voltage to the much higher traction battery voltage. This paper proposes a novel integrated electric architecture for SEVs which relies on a flying capacitor topology for both battery charging and driving the motor. The onboard solar energy is used to solve the common problem of balancing the flying capacitors, which at the same time helps the solar voltage boost problem since the solar power no longer needs to be boosted to the full battery voltage. Simulation results are presented for a 2.2 kW charging system with 150 V rms input voltage and maximum of 600 W available solar power. The current THD reduces from 1.37% to 0.36% when the PV structure integrates with the flying capacitor topology.