AC charging

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this lecture on alternating current charging or AC

charging of electric vehicles. I am Gautham Ram and a postdoctorate researcher at the Delft
University of Technology.

In this lecture, we are going to learn about four things: First, what are key parts of an EV AC
charger? Second, how does AC charging work? Third, what are types of connectors used for
AC charging? And lastly, how can the AC charging power be calculated?

Let’s us first look at the parts of an AC charger. In its simplest form, AC charging uses an
onboard charger to convert electricity from AC power from the conventional AC grid to
direct current or DC power to charge the traction battery.

Cars have a standardised vehicle inlet, and a charging cable is used for connecting the
vehicle connector to the infrastructure socket of the AC charging station. In some cases, the
charging cable is permanently connected to the charging station as well, similar to a petrol
pump.

For a safe and reliable charging process, there should be several essential components in an
AC charging station. Let’s look at it by following the power flow from the charger to the EV:

When the charging station and the EV are first connected, the charge controller in the
station communicates with the EV. In this communication, information regarding the
connectivity, fault condition and current limits are exchanged between the charger and the
EV.

Safety interlocks are used to ensure a safe charging process and to stop the charging in the
event of a fault condition or an improper connection between the EV and the charger.

When the AC power is provided to the EV, the onboard charger has a rectifier that converts
the AC power to DC power.

Then, the power control unit appropriately adjusts the voltage and current of a DC/DC
converter to control the charging power delivered to the battery.

The power control unit, in turn, gets inputs from the Battery Management System or the
BMS for controlling the battery charging. The BMS monitors the key battery operation
parameters like voltage, current, temperature.

It then provides inputs to the power control unit to control the charging power delivered by
the DC/DC converter.

Apart from that, there is a protection circuit inside the onboard charger. The BMS triggers
the protection circuits if the battery's operating limits, like the voltage or current, are
exceeded, thereby isolating the battery if needed for its safe operation.
Now with a basic understanding of the AC charging process, let us now look at the four main
types of AC charging connectors which are used around the world.

The EV industry has unfortunately not agreed on one specific AC connector, so depending on
the car brand and country, the connector varies in shape, size and pin configuration. One of
the main reasons is the difference in AC voltage and frequency around the world.

For example, in the USA, power is supplied using 120V, 60 Hz single phase AC or 240V, 60Hz,
dual phase AC. On the other hand, in Europe, 230V, 50Hz single phase AC or 400V, 50 Hz
three-phase AC is used.

Due to these differences in voltage, number of phases and frequency, it leads to differences
in chargers between the two regions.

Generally, an AC connector has two or more larger pins to transmit power, and a few more
smaller pins for the sake of communication. There are four types of AC connectors used
worldwide, namely:

The Type 1 connector, which is mostly used in USA & Japan.

The Type 2 connector, which is mostly used in Europe, including those of Tesla cars.

The Type 3 connector, used in Europe but is being increasingly phased out by Type 2
connectors.

And finally, the proprietary connector used by Tesla for its cars in the USA.

Besides this, China has its own standard for AC charging, which is similar to Type 2
connectors.

Now, let us look at how these connectors are different by diving into the details.

In this picture, we can see a Type 1 vehicle connector, which is used specifically for charging
with single-phase AC. It has a round housing consisting of five pins. There are 2 pins: L1, L2
for single-phase AC; one pin for the protective earth; and there are two signal pins which are
used for communication which is the Proximity Pilot (PP), and the Control Pilot (CP).

The proximity pilot is used for ensuring connectivity between the EV and the charger, and
the control pilot is used for controlling the charging current.

The maximum voltage and current rating of this charger of type 1 are : 120 V or 240V single
phase AC with a maximum current rating of 80A

Let us look at the Type 2 vehicle connector, which is also commonly referred to as the
Mennekes connector.

The Type 2 connector which is used all over Europe is circular in shape, with a flat top edge.
The top row consists of two small pins for communication as we’ve ween earlier, namely the
proximity pilot and the control pilot.

The middle and lower row consists of five pins for AC power transfer, there are three pins
used for three-phase AC connection: phase A, phase B and phase C. And there are two pins
which are used for the neutral and the protective earth. The maximum voltage/current
rating are: single phase 230V up to 80A and in case of 3 phase, the voltage is 400V and the
current can be up to 63A.

In case of Tesla, they use a proprietary connector in the US, as shown in this picture.

In Europe, Tesla cars use the Type 2 connector far charging the cars. Unlike other car
manufacturers, Tesla is unique that it uses the same connector for both AC and DC charging.
With this US Tesla connector, a maximum charging power 17.2 KW can be delivered to the
car from a 240V AC outlet.

You may have noticed that, as I have mentioned, the Type 1 and Type 2 connectors have 2
common communication pins: the Control Pilot (CP) and the Proximity Pilot (PP).

Let us look deeper into their function.

The Proximity Pilot (PP) checks if the vehicle connector is connected properly to the vehicle
inlet, the connection.

If the connection is not properly established, the Proximity Pilot will detect it, and the entire
charging process will be disabled for safety.

In case of the Control Pilot (CP), the Control Pilot is used for controlling the charging current.

The control pilot continuously sends a pulse width modulated or PWM signal to the car. In
this way, it tells the car the maximum current that can be drawn from the charging station,
Imax.

The car then uses this PMW signal and then draws the desired current Iac, and it ensures
that as long as this value is smaller than the maximum charging current Imax.

Now that we have seen about the different AC charger types, let us now look at how we can
calculate the AC charging power. This is quite simple.

The calculation of single phase AC charger power is the product of the single-phase AC
voltage Vac, and the grid current Iac.

The three-phase AC charging power is calculated as root three times the product of the line
to line three-phase AC voltage V3ac and the grid current Iac;

For AC power calculations, it is important that the root mean square or the RMS values of
the voltage and currents are used.
Also we should keep in mind that not all the AC charging power is actually delivered to the
traction battery.

Typically on-board chargers have an efficiency of 90-95%, and the rest of it is lost due to
losses in the conversion.

Based on the AC charging power that has been introduced, now let’s look at the charging
time versus charging power for different battery sizes.

Assuming no losses, the charging time tch can be calculated as the battery capacity Ebatt
divided by the charging power Pch.

The graph on the right side shows the required charging time for different charging powers
in the case of two batteries size of 30kWh and 100kWh.

The data labels shown are commonly used EV AC charging powers. As we can see, if we
charge a battery with higher powers, say 22kW, a couple of hours are still required to charge
the battery fully. This is especially true for the 100kwh battery.

Considering there is limited space and weight for the on-board charger and for the power,
there is an upper limit for the maximum AC charging power that can be delivered.

This is why if we need to charge the car battery faster we need to move to fast charging of
50kW and above using DC off-board chargers.

To wrap up, you have now got an idea about the parts of an AC charger and the four AC
charger connector types. We also looked at the role of the proximity and control pilot in the
control and protection of the charging process.

Finally, we saw how a simple formula could be used to estimate the charging power and
charging time for AC charging.

Thank you!