Simulation of an Electric Vehicle and an AC
Level-2 Charger Incorporating Temperature
Dependency
Hugo E. Vega-Ayala, Norberto García-Barriga
División de Estudios de Posgrado de la Facultad de Ingenería Eléctrica
Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
Morelia, Michoacán, México
hvega@dep.fie.umich.mx, gbarriga@umich.mx
Abstract—This paper presents a time domain modelling of
an electric vehicle (EV) and an AC Level-2 charger. The EV
model implemented in this work take into account the parameters
provided by the manufacturer as well as environmental condi-
tions such as temperature, which plays an important role in the
charging process of EVs. Simulation results are compared against
field measurements reported in literature for a 2013 Nissan-Leaf
EV. Results in terms of charging power indicate that the time
domain model compares well with experimental measurements.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Electric vehicles are considered as distributed energy stor-
age devices not only to balance power fluctuations from
renewable sources of energy, but also to offer secondary
services to the distribution network [1]. In order to investigate
the impact of electric vehicles integration on the distribution
networks operation, new models must be implemented to
develop control strategies and accurate simulations.
The available driving range of electric vehicles is strongly
affected by environmental temperatures. The primary cause is
the poor performance of the battery pack under low tempera-
tures [2]. The temperature-dependence behavior is due to the
variation in the physical properties of the inner components of
the battery cell and it is reflected as variation in the peak power
the cell can source/sink or the maximum energy that battery
can hold/deliver [3]. Besides ambient temperatures, the driving
behavior, the charging profile and the Depth of Discharge
(DOD) are other factors that can significantly impact the
battery lifetime [4].
Accurate battery model for high-power lithium ion cells
have been developed for the use in EV simulations. In [5], a
resistive equivalent circuit battery model and a 2-capacitance
battery model are compared to and validated with experimental
data. The predictions of both models were reasonably close to
the experimental results. Nevertheless, the battery model based
on capacitance showed a slightly better performance.
In this paper, an EV with an AC Level-2 charger model
with temperature dependency. is implemented. The purpose
of this work is to develop a model that correctly approximates
the behavior of an EV. This model will allow to simulate the
power demanded by these vehicles and analyze the impact of
the EVs in a distribution network.
II. E LECTRIC VEHICLE MODEL
The battery is one of the most important elements in an
EV, which can be modeled in different ways depending on
the needs of the study. The model implemented in this work
uses a simplified equivalent circuit of the battery as shown
in Figure 1(a). This model consists of two elements: an
open circuit voltage Voc and an internal series resistance Ri
with a temperature dependency characteristic. Furthermore,
Figure 1(b) depicts the characteristic charging waveforms of
a lithium-ion battery of an EV. It can be appreciated that the
charging process is characterized by an specific time instant
called intermediate point (tm ), which defines two charging
modes: charging at constant current and charging at constant
voltage.
The first operation mode occurs at the beginning of the
process, where the battery current has its maximum constant
level up to the intermediate point in which the voltage reaches
its maximum value. From this point, the voltage remains
constant and the current starts to decrease until the cut off
current (see Fig. 1(b)). This model is deduced from three main
equations of the battery [6],
Vocv = A · SOC + B (1)
Vbat = Vocv + Ri · Ibat (2)
d(SOC) Vocv · Ibat
= (3)
dt Qbat
where A is the voltage slope, B is the offset (volts), SOC
is the state of charge of the battery and Qbat is the capacity
of the battery. In addition, Ibat and Vbat are the current and
voltage across the battery terminals, respectively.
A. Temperature dependency
An EV battery has an internal resistance, which value
depends on the environmental temperature, state of charge
and direction of power flow [5]. This resistance represents
 A. Charging at constant current
When charging at constant current, it follows that Ibat =
Ibatm . Substituting (1) in (3) and integrating the first order
differential equation, an expression for the state of charge is
obtained [6],
   
B A · Ibatm (t − t0 ) B
SOC = SOC0 + exp − (5)
A Qbat A
Further, the power demanded by the set of batteries is,

P = Vbat · Ibatm = (A · SOC + B + Ri · Ibatm ) · Ibatm (6)

where the parameters Ibatm , A, B and Qbat are constant. In
addition, SOC0 is the state of charge of the battery at t0 and
tm is the intermediate point. The expressions are only valid in
the range when the charge current is constant, which means
that t0 ≤ t ≤ tm .
Considering the efficiency η of the power electronic con-
verters within the AC Level-2 charger, then the total power
demanded by the EV Level-2 charger is defined as,
Pbat
Fig. 1. EV batteries: a) Simplified equivalent circuit, b) charging process. PEV = (7)
η
B. Charging at constant voltage
the electrical resistance between the terminal contacts and
When the charging process of the battery is at constant
the electrodes. In this work, the temperature dependency
voltage, then Vbat = Vbatm . Therefore, substituting (1) in
is represented as change in the internal resistance and is
(3) and integrating the first order differential equation, the
described by the following equation,
equations that define the SOC and P are,
Vbatm
Ri (Ti ) = Ro (1 + α(To − Ti )) (4) A B
SOC =  −
1+ Vbatm −(A·SOC0 +B)
exp − A·V batm
(t − t0 ) A
where Ro is the resistance of the battery at the reference tem- A·SOC0 +B Ri ·Qbat
perature To , α is the temperature coefficient of the resistance (8)
and Ti is the ambient temperature.
Vbatm − B A
III. AC L EVEL -2 C HARGER P = Vbatm · Ibat = Vbatm · − · SOC (9)
Ri Ri
As described in Figure 2, EV model developed in this work These expressions are only valid in the range when the
consists of a battery pack and a Level-2 charging device. The charge voltage is constant which means that tm ≤ t ≤ tcut ,
charge strategy followed by an AC Level-2 charger relies on where tcut is the time at the end of the charging process when
keeping the current constant until the set of batteries reaches the current drops to the lowest limit for charging.
its maximum voltage. The charge strategy is shifted once
the maximum voltage is reached. Then, the voltage remains IV. T EST CASE
constant whilst the current starts to decrease. In this section, an EV battery pack with a Level-2 charger is
compared with test data. The 2013 Nissan Leaf EV was chosen
as test case to carry out simulations in Matlab for multiple
ambient temperatures (0o F , 20o F , 40o F , 72o F , 95o F ).
The Nissan Leaf is one of the most commonly used EVs
due to its relation between cost and performance. Some of its
technical specifications are shown in Table I.

TABLE I
V EHICLE TESTING SPECIFICATIONS .

2013 Nissan Leaf EV

Class: Midsize car EPA Range: 84 miles
Seatbealt positions: 5 Trim level: SV
Fig. 2. Electric vehicle topology for modelling purposes. Type: BEV CARB: Type II ZEV
 Table II summarizes the battery specifications used by the 8
2103 Nissan Leaf EV. Figure 3 shows a 5-hour simulation 0°F
20°F
results in terms of power demanded, state of charge, current 6 40°F

Power [kW]
and voltage of the battery. On the other hand, Table III shows 72°F
the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) specifications 4 95°F

used in [7] for the test. In general, Level-2 equipment offers

charging through 240V AC plug and, depending on the battery 2

technology used in the vehicle, Level-2 charging generally

0
takes between 3 and 6 hours to completely charge a fully 0 1 2 3 4 5
depleted battery charged at 3.3 or 6.6 kW. Time [Hrs] a)
1
It can be seen in Figure 3(a) that the charging power shows
a constant characteristic for t ≤ tm . On the contrary, the state 0.8
of charge reaches limiting behavior at the end of the constant

SOC [%]
0.6
current charging region.
The time instant at the intermediate point tm shows a mini- 0.4
mum value at low environmental temperatures, that is 2.79Hrs
0.2
at 0◦ F and its maximum value appears at high temperatures, in
this case 2.84Hrs at 95◦ F . This is an important relation that it 0
0 1 2 3 4 5
is actually observed in field measurements. These results could Time [Hrs] b)
not be observed without the temperature dependency. Even 20

though the effect is minimal compared to field measurements,

15
it should be taken into account that the effects due to the SOC

Current [A]
of the battery and the direction of the current are not modeled. 10
These variables have influence in the charging process of the
batteries. 5

The SOC behaves very similar for any ambient tempera- 0

ture. Further, it can be seen that the SOC reaches nearly 90% 0 1 2 3 4 5
Time [Hrs] c)
at time instant tm . 364.92
Field measurements for the 2013 Nissan Leaf EV with an 364.9
AC Level-2 charger are reported in [7]. A set of measurements
364.88
Voltage [V]

at specific time instants are extracted from results reported in

[7] and listed in Table II and Table III. The metric chosen 364.86

to quantitatively assess the accuracy of the model was the 364.84

percentage error defined as, 364.82
  364.8
 Xsimulated − Xmeasured  0 1 2 3 4 5
%Error = 100 ·    (10) Time [Hrs] d)
Xsimulated 

Table IV shows the comparison between the experimental Fig. 3. Charge waveforms for the Nissan Leaf at different ambient tempera-
tures: a) Pbat , b) SOC, c) Ibat and d) Vbat .

TABLE II
N ISSAN L EAF 2013 BATTERY SPECIFICATIONS [7].
and model predicted intermediate point tm for a set of ambient
Manufacturer: AESC temperatures T = {0, 20, 40, 72, 95}. It can be seen that
Type: Lithium-ion Number of Cell: 96
Nominal Cell Voltage: 3.8 V Nominal System Voltage: 360 V simulation results of the EV charge were within an average
Rated Pack Energy: 24 kWh Rated Pack Capacity: 66.2 Ah error of 4.07%, a standard deviation of 4.41% and a maximum
Minimum Cell Voltage: 2.5 V Maximum Cell Voltage: 4.2 V error of 11.11%. Similarly, Table III reports a comparison of
Ro : 0.3mΩ α : 0.00435K −1
the power demanded obtained by simulation and experimental
data.
TABLE III
EVSE SPECIFICATIONS A close-up look at the power demanded at a set of time
instants T = {0, 1, 2, 3} hours in Table V shows that simulated
Delta Smart Grid Capable EVSE
powers are similar to measured powers. Over the 3 first hours
Connector type: J1772
Charge level: AC Level-2
range of time, simulation results show a 3.88% of average
Input Voltage: 208/240 VAC error with a maximum error of 22.99%. It can be seen that
Maximum input current: 32 Amp as the ambient temperature increases, the percentage error
Circuit breaker rating: 40 Amp decreases, especially at the end of the charging process.
 TABLE IV R EFERENCES
M ISMATCHES FOR THE SIMULATION OF THE INTERMEDIATE POINT.
[1] A. Jímenez and N. García, “Voltage unbalance analysis of distribution
T Field Simulation Error systems using a three-phase power flow and a genetic algorithm for pev
(o F ) measurements results (%) fleets scheduling,” In Proc. of the IEEE PES General Meeting, pp. 1–8,
0 2.48 2.79 11.11 2012.
20 2.65 2.80 5.35 [2] X. Gong and C. C. Mi, “Temperature-dependent performance of lithium
40 2.73 2.81 2.84 ion batteries in electric vehicles,” Applied Power Electronics Conference
and Expositions (APEC), IEEE, pp. 1065–1072, March 2015.
72 2.84 2.83 0.35
[3] A. A. Hussein, “Experimental modeling and analysis of lithium-ion
95 2.86 2.84 0.70
battery temperature dependence,” Applied Power Electronics Conference
and Expositions (APEC), IEEE, pp. 1084–1088, 2015.
[4] A. Moshirvaziri, J. Liu, Y. Arumugam, and O. Trescases, “Modelling
TABLE V of temperature dependent impedance in lithium ion polymer batteries
M ISMATCHES FOR THE SIMULATION OF THE POWER DEMANDED . and impact analysis on electric vehicles,” Industrial Electronics Society,
IECON, IEEE, pp. 3149–3155, 2014.
Field Simulation [5] V. H. Johnson and A. A. Pesaran, “Temperature-dependent battery models
Measurements Results Error(%) for high-power lithium-ion batteries,” In Proc. of the 17th Annual Electric
T (0 F ) t(Hrs) P (kW ) P (kW ) Vehicles Symposium, pp. 15–18, October 2000.
0 6.69 6.60 1.36 [6] Q. Wu, Grid Integration of Electric Vehicle in Open Electricity Markets,
1 6.67 6.60 1.06 1st ed. John Wiley & Sons, LTD, 2013.
0
2 6.67 6.60 1.06 [7] “Advanced vehicle testing and infrastructure,” https://avt.inl.gov/, con-
3 2.11 2.74 22.99 sulted: January 2017.
0 6.68 6.60 1.21
1 6.67 6.60 1.06
20
2 6.67 6.60 1.06
3 2.32 2.75 15.63
0 6.67 6.60 1.06
1 6.67 6.60 1.06
40
2 6.67 6.60 1.06
3 2.49 2.77 10.10
0 6.69 6.60 1.36
1 6.68 6.60 1.21
72
2 6.68 6.60 1.21
3 2.53 2.78 8.99
0 6.74 6.60 2.12
1 6.71 6.60 1.66
95
2 6.71 6.60 1.66
3 2.80 2.82 0.70

V. C ONCLUSION

The simulation of an EV model and an AC Level-2 charger

with temperature dependency was presented in this paper. The
model implemented compares well with field measurements.
Validation of the model indicated that the demanded power,
state of charge, current and voltage of the battery were
predicted reasonably. Nevertheless, it should be noted that
the state of charge and direction of the current are not taken
into account in the modelling of the internal resistance of the
battery. Therefore, further research work should be carried out
to allow resistance to vary with SOC and direction of the
current.
The model implemented in this work seeks to consider
parameters such as the temperature for a better description
of the EV batteries charge process. Improving the EV model
allows for more accurate results, in this case to determine
tm and then the power demanded for the EV during the
entire charge process of the battery pack. Furthermore, the
temperature variations allow to calculate other variables that
are not analize in this paper such as internal resistance of the
batteries and their life cycle. Research work is in progress
to incorporate the EV model to power flow simulations of
distribution networks.