Electrification has been a key component of technological progress and economic development since the industrial revolution. It has improved living conditions, spurred innovation, and increased efficiency across all sectors of our economy and all aspects of our lives. During the coming decades, electrification is expected to reach further and deeper into the transportation, building, and industry sectors, mainly motivated by the energy transition to a zero-carbonemission-based economy to mitigate climate change.

This paper proposes a novel architecture for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) dc charging station at the megawatt level, through the use of a grid-tied neutral point clamped (NPC) converter. The proposed bipolar dc structure reduces the step-down effort on the dc-dc fast chargers. In addition, this paper proposes a balancing mechanism that allows handling any difference on the dc loads while keeping the midpoint voltage accurately regulated. By formally defining the unbalance operation limit, the proposed control scheme is able to provide complementary balancing capabilities by the use of an additional NPC leg acting as a bidirectional dc-dc stage, simulating the minimal load condition and allowing the modulator to keep the control on the dc voltages under any load scenario. The proposed solution enables fast charging for PEVs concentrating several charging units into a central grid-tied converter. In this paper, simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed charging station architecture.

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure will play a critical role in decarbonization during the next decades, energizing a large share of the transportation sector. This will further increase the enabling role of power electronics converters as an energy transition technology in the widespread adoption of clean energy sources and their efficient use. However, this deep transformation comes with challenges, some of which are already unfolding, such as the slow deployment of charging infrastructure and competing charging standards, and others that will have a long-term impact if not addressed timely, such as the reliability of power converters and power system stability due to loss of system inertia, just to name a few. Nevertheless, the inherent transition toward power systems with higher penetration of power electronics and batteries, together with a layer of communications and information technologies, will also bring opportunities for more flexible and intelligent grid integration and services, which could increase the share of renewable energy in the power grid. This work provides an overview of the existing charging infrastructure ecosystem, covering the different charging technologies for different EV classes, their structure, and configurations, including how they can impact the grid in the future.

The development of high-power charging stations with fast chargers is a promising solution to shorten the charging time for electric vehicles (EVs). The neutral-point-clamped (NPC) converter-based bipolar-dc-bus-fed charging station brings many merits, but it has inherent voltage balance limits. To solve this issue, a voltage balance control (VBC) method based on a new modulation together with three-level (TL) dc-dc converter-based fast charger is proposed. Additionally, an effective VBC coordination between the TL dc-dc converter and the NPC converter is formulated. Through the proposed VBC coordination, the controllable balancing region is extended so that additional balancing circuits are eliminated. Meanwhile, the quality of the grid-side currents is improved as the NPC converter has more freedom to control currents. The low-frequency voltage fluctuations in dc buses are removed because the TL dc-dc converter performs most of the balancing tasks. Faster VBC perturbation performance is achieved due to higher available balancing current at TL dc-dc converter side. In addition, the voltage balance limits of both the TL dc-dc converter and the NPC converter are explored. The voltage balancing performances are compared when VBC is located at different sides. Simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the proposed VBC and the VBC coordination.

Large scale grid connected photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion systems have reached the megawatt level. This imposes new challenges on existing grid interface converter topologies and opens new opportunities to be explored. In this paper a new medium voltage multilevel-multistring configuration is introduced based on a three-phase cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter and multiple string dc-dc converters. The proposed configuration enables a large increase of the total capacity of the PV system, while improving power quality and efficiency. The converter structure is very flexible and modular since it decouples the grid converter from the PV string converter, which allows to accomplish independent control goals. The main challenge of the proposed configuration is to handle the inherent power imbalances that occur not only between the different cells of one phase of the converter but also between the three phases. The control strategy to deal with these imbalances is also introduced in this paper. Simulation results of a 7-level CHB for a multistring PV system are presented to validate the proposed topology and control method.

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the power electronics solutions enabling bipolar dc grids. The bipolar dc grid concept has proven to be more efficient, flexible and higher in quality than the conventional unipolar one. However, despite its many features, these systems still have to overcome their issues with asymmetrical loading to avoid voltage imbalances, besides meeting regulatory and safety requirements that are still under development. Advances in power electronics and the large-scale deployment of dc consumer appliances has put this growing architecture in the spotlight, as it has drawn the attention of different research groups recently. The following pages provide an insightful discussion regarding the topologies that enable these architectures, their regulatory requirements besides their features and level of development. Additionally, some future trends and challenges in the further development of this technology are discussed to motivate future contributions that address open problems and explore new possibilities.