An Electric Vehicle Battery Charger Based on Zeta

Converter Fed from a PV Array

Alia M. Khatab1, Mostafa I. Marei1, 2 and Hadi M. Elhelw1
1
Electrical and Control Department
Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport
Cairo, Egypt
2
Electrical Power and Machines Department
Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University
Cairo, Egypt
aliamohamed92@gmail.com, mostafamarei@yahoo.ca and h_elhelw@hotmail.com

Abstract—This paper proposes a battery charger for an
Electric Vehicle (EV) based on Zeta converter. A Zeta converter
is a fourth order DC-DC converter which works as a buck-boost
converter with a non-inverted output. The Zeta converter is
controlled to extract the maximum power from a Photovoltaic
(PV) array to charge the EV battery. The PV array is composed
of 280 watt PV modules. The Perturb and Observe (P&O)
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technique is used to
obtain the maximum power from the PV array. It is also used to
get the appropriate duty ratio for the Zeta converter switch. The
proposed system is modeled and simulated using the
EMTDC/PSCAD software. Simulation results are presented to
assess the performance of the proposed system.
Keywords—Battery charger, Photovoltaic, Zeta converter.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, there are many reasons for the development of
electric vehicles (EVs). The most important reasons are
increasing the fuel cost, lacking in energy resources and
reducing the greenhouse gas emission. The advantages of using
the EVs can be stated as, being a source of the clean energy,
having high efficiency if compared to the conventional vehicles
and producing less noise than the conventional vehicles. The
EVs that are widely used worldwide can be either hybrid EVs
or battery EVs [1].
The hybrid EVs is composed of an internal combustion
engine in addition to an electrical rechargeable battery. The
battery will be charged while the vehicle is moving through the
regenerative braking. The battery EVs can also be charged
from an electrical external charging outlet. The battery charger
must be built by using a DC-DC converter [1].
EVs have to contain a DC-DC converter which is used to
convert from one voltage level to another. Some battery
chargers can be built with conventional buck-boost, Cuk or
SEPIC converters [2, 3]. The proposed system will be built
using a zeta converter. Zeta converter is a fourth order DC-DC
converter [4, 5]. It acts as a conventional buck-boost but with a
non-inverted output voltage polarity. In another word, the input
and the output terminals have the same ground [6, 7].
Zeta converter has a lot of advantages which can be
summarized as follows [7, 8]:
1) It has a simple design, which composes from four
energy storage elements; two inductors and two
capacitors.
2) The output current can be continuous and free of the
ripples due to the presence of an inductor at the output
side.
3) Operating as a buck-boost converter means that the
Zeta converter has the ability to increase and decrease
the output voltage.
4) If compared to the conventional buck-boost converter,
the output voltage is not inverted.
5) It has small settling time, low switching stress and it
can be connected with high frequency transformers.
The Zeta converter is proposed to charge the EV battery
from Photovoltaic (PV) array. The PV array is composed of 12
monocrystalline panels each of 280 watts. A control technique
is required to get the appropriate duty ratio of the gate pulse
for the switch of Zeta converter and also to achieve the
Maximum Power Point (MPP). The Perturb and observe
(P&O) technique is used for this mission due to its simplicity
and its quick response to achieve the MPP [9 – 11].
This paper discusses Zeta converter model in Section II,
followed by the proposed system in Section III. The
simulation results are analyzed in Section IV. A conclusion of
this paper is presented in Section V.
II. ZETA CONVERTER MODEL
Zeta converter is a fourth order non-inverted buck-boost
converter. Zeta converter, as shown in Fig. 1, consists of a
switch (S1), a diode (D1), two inductors (L1 and L2), two
capacitors (C1 and C2) and a load (R). Two modes can be
operated by the zeta converter; on and off modes [12, 13]. The
on-mode occurs when S1 is turned-on and D1 is off, while the
off-mode occurs when S1 is turned-off and D1 is on.
The first mode (on-mode), shown in Fig. 2, occurs when
the switch S1 is turned-on and the diode D1 is open-circuited.
During this mode, both inductors L1 and L2 are in the charging

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state. The first inductor L1 is charging from the input voltage respectively. The Ẋ1, Ẋ2, and Ẋ3 represent the derivative of IL1,
source. While, the second inductor L2 is charging from the IL2, and VC1 respectively. The inputs to the SSR model are U1
capacitor C1. In this mode, both inductor currents increase and U2 which represent the input voltage to the Zeta converter
linearly [13]. (Vs) and the output voltage from the converter (Vout),
respectively. The given SSR represents Zeta converter at the
S1 C1 L2
continuous domain (S-domain).
‒ + IL2
IL1 Equation (2) gives the relation between the input and the
output voltages of Zeta converter in terms of the duty-ratio (K)
Vs L1 D1 C2 R of the switch (S1) gate pulse [13].

= (2)
1−

Fig. 1 Zeta converter circuit diagram To charge a battery pack of 200V from a PV array of 205V
at the MPP, the duty ratio is calculated by follows:
S1 C1 L2 200
‒ + = ∴ ≅ 0.48 (3)
IL2 205 1 −
IL1
The maximum current (Impp) from the PV array can be
Vs L1 D1 C2 R calculated by Eq. (4). Equation (6) calculates the input current
for the EV battery (IDCB).
= × . (4)
= 9.07 × 2 = 18.14 (5)
Fig. 2 The on-mode circuit of the Zeta converter
3400
Figure 3 illustrates the second mode (off-mode) which = = = 17 (6)
200
occurs when the switch S1 is turned-off and the diode D1 is
turned-on. In this mode, the inductors L1 and L2 are The Zeta converter parameters (L1, L2, and C1) can be
discharging through the capacitor C1 and the load, designed to work in the Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM).
respectively. Therefore, the current of the two inductors are The CCM mode always results in stress reduction on the
decreasing as they are discharging [13]. converter’s components. In addition, the CCM offers low
ripples on the output side because of the presence of inductor
S1 C1 L2 L2. Consequently, better MPP results will be achieved [7, 8].
‒ +
IL2 The components of Zeta converter are designed as follows
IL1 [14]:
Vs L1 D1 C2 R 205 × 0.48
= = ≅ 5 (7)
∆ 18.14 × 0.05 × 20000
(1 − ) 200 × 0.52
= = ≅ 5 (8)
∆ 17 × 0.05 × 20000
Fig. 3 The off-mode circuit of the Zeta converter
17 × 0.48
= = ≅ 22 (9)
The mathematical State Space Representation (SSR) of the ∆ 200 × 0.09 × 20000
Zeta converter can be obtained by applying Node and Mesh where, Vmpp is the MPP voltage of the PV model, f is the
analysis at the two modes of operation of the converter. The switching frequency. ΔIL1 and ΔIL2 are the current ripples of
states of the SSR are the currents of the two inductors and the the two inductors which is 5%, ΔVC1 is the voltage ripple of
voltage of capacitor (C1). The SSR can be written as follows the capacitor C1 which is 9%. The capacitor C2 equals 200 µF.
[13]:
The next section discusses the operation of the proposed
−(1 − ) system.
0 0
0
= 0 0 + (1)
III. THE PROPOSED BATTERY CHARGER SYSTEM
−1
(1 − ) −
The proposed battery charger shown in Fig. 4, is composed
0 0 0 of a Zeta DC-DC converter, a PV array, and a control
algorithm to operate the system. In this work, operating the
where, the three states (X1, X2, and X3) represent the two Zeta converter is managed by the P&O control technique. The
inductors currents IL1 and IL2 and the capacitor voltage VC1 P&O is generating the appropriate gate signal for S1 to achieve

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either buck or boost outputs. In addition, it achieves the MPP IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
of the PV array. The input voltage and current from the PV As shown in Fig. 5, the simulation has been run at three
array are the input signals for the P&O [10, 15]. different values of solar irradiance to evaluate the dynamic
performance of the proposed system. Often the temperature
S1 C1 L2
‒ +
doesn’t change hugely during the day; therefore, all the
IL2 simulation results on this work consider the change of the solar
IL1 Rout
+ PWM irradiance only at constant temperature (25°C) [7]. The
Cin
Vs L1 D1 C2 Vout proposed system has been modeled and simulated on
‒ P&O EMTDC/PSCAD software.

Fig. 4 The proposed battery charger

The incremental step of the P&O is the change in the duty

cycle to reach the MPP properly [10, 15]. In order to achieve
the MPP of the panel to control the Zeta converter, operating
in the buck and the boost modes, the incremental step is
adjusted to 0.001. Initially, the duty cycle is set at 0.5 and the
converter works in a floating mode where Vs is the same value
of Vout. The P&O updates the duty cycle by the incremental
step and the mode of zeta converter is set automatically.
The zeta converter will be supplied through twelve 280 W
monocrystalline PV panels. Six panels are connected in series
Fig. 5 Solar irradiance variation
to form a string and then two strings are connected in parallel
to form the PV array. Table I presents the panel parameters. All
A change in the duty cycle range has to specify whether
the given parameters at Table I, are at the Standard Test buck or boost mode is activated [15]. Figure 6 shows that the
Conditions (STC); 1000W/m2, 25°C and air mass of 1.5 [16]. two modes of Zeta converter (buck and boost) have been
The output voltage (Vout) represents the battery voltage of the achieved through changing the duty cycle from approximately
electrical vehicle [17]. The vehicle requires a 200V battery to
0.48 to 0.52 when the irradiance is reduced from 100W/m2 to
operate [17]. The proposed system parameters are given in
500W/m2. It is worth to be mentioned that the P&O generates
Table II. The proposed system simulation results are discussed
the duty cycle based on the measured PV voltage and current.
in the next section.

TABLE I. PV PANEL PARAMETERS

Parameter Value
Maximum power, Pmax 280 W

Voltage at the MPP, Vmpp 31.2 V

Open circuit voltage, Voc 39.5 V

Current at the MPP, Impp 9.07 A

Short circuit current, Isc 9.71 A

Number of cells per module 60

TABLE II. ZETA CONVERTER PARAMETERS

Parameter Value
L1 and L2 5 mH

C1 22 µF

C2 200 µF

Cin 47 µF

Rout 0.001 Ω Fig. 6 Duty cycle of proposed Zeta converter: (a) During different irradiance
levels. (b) Zoom on the transition from buck to boost mode.

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 The behavior of Zeta converter is illustrated in Fig. 7. Both
inductors are operating at charging and discharging modes,
simultaneously during buck and boost modes. The inductors
currents have been changed due to varying the solar irradiance
from 1000 W/m2 to 500 W/m2. It can be noticed that the
maximum current for L1 is obtained within the buck mode at
1000 W/m2 irradiance.

Fig. 8 Dynamic performance of the proposed system: (a) PV array voltage. (b)
PV array current. (c) Extracted power from the PV array. (d) Vehicle battery
voltage.

Figure 9, demonstrates the PV trajectory during the MPPT

under different irradiances. The MPPs are clearly indicated in
the figure. The MPP has been achieved at approximately 205
V and 3560 W at 1000 W/m2. By reducing the solar
Fig. 7 Currents of the inductors L1 and L2.
irradiance, the P&O achieves the new MPP. By changing the
Figure 8(a) shows the change in the PV voltage due to the solar irradiance, PV voltage and current are changed. Finally,
variation of the solar irradiance. The PV current is displayed the P&O manages to get a new duty cycle that will swap from
in Fig. 8(b). Figure 8(c) demonstrates the extracted power buck to boost mode.
from the PV array. Figure 8(c) indicates that at 1000 W/m2 the
maximum power from the PV array is obtained and by
decreasing the irradiance to 750 W/m2 the power is reduced.
At 500 w/m2, the extracted power from the PV array is further
reduced.
It is worth mentioning that the output power oscillates
around the MPP due to the continuous perturbation of the
P&O technique. The proposed system charges the battery
with the extracted PV power around the 200V level as
illustrated in Fig. 8(d). A slight change in the output voltage
that can be neglected occurs at the battery terminals due to
variation of the duty cycle.

Fig. 9 PV array output powers at MPPs using P&O

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 V. CONCLUSION [13] P.R. Babu, S.R. Prasath and R.Kiruthika, “Simulation and
Performance Analysis of CCM Zeta Converter with PID
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Zeta converter has been operated at buck and boost modes. Instrumentation and Control (ICICIC), 2017.
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