The global warming problem together with the environmental issues has already pushed the governments to replace the conventional fossil-fuel vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) having less emission. This replacement has led to adding a huge number of EVs with the capability of connecting to the grid. It is noted that the presence of such vehicles may introduce several challenges to the electrical grid due to their grid-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-grid capabilities. In between, the power quality issues would be the main items in electrical grids highly impacted by such vehicles. Thus, this study is devoted to investigating and reviewing the challenges brought to the electrical networks by EVs. In this regard, the current and future conditions of EVs along with the recent research works made into the issue of EVs have been discussed in this study. Accordingly, the problems due to the connection of EVs to the electrical grid have been discussed, and some solutions have been proposed to deal with these challenges.

This study presents a novel power management strategy (PMS) for a small urban electric vehicle. Enhancing battery electric vehicles driving range and their batteries’ lifetime are possible through developing a more effective PMS for them. Fuzzy logic control (FLC) is proposed to control the power control unit (PCU) of the battery management system. The control devices used are verified and experimented by simulations to evaluate their performance using the MATLAB software. The good performance of FLC can be observed in terms of settling time and peak overshoot from the simulations result. The simulation results show that the proposed PCU can decrease the energy loss inside the battery and increase the battery lifetime.

This study presents a newly integrated converter for plug-in electric vehicles. The proposed structure achieves various modes of vehicle operation (plug-in charging or power factor correction (PFC), propulsion and regenerative braking). Moreover, a non-linear carrier control method is used for PFC operation which saves the voltage sensor requirement for continuous conduction mode of operation. Reduction of feedback circuitry enhances the compactness of the converter, making it more suitable for on-board charger. Stress and loss analyses and selection of passive components of the converter have been investigated for each mode. Simulation and experimental results show the validity of the proposed converter.

This study presents a methodology to consider the impedance of a grid in power-hardware-in-the-loop experiments to validate power converter control in the presence of harmonics or resonances in the network impedance. As the phenomena to emulate are in a large frequency range, the skin effect in conductors has to be taken into account. A procedure is developed to model the network. Then, the model is simplified to reduce the computation requirements and discretised for real-time implementation. The proposed method has been applied to analyse the harmonic interactions due to on-board converters running on a 25 kV–50 Hz railway infrastructure for frequencies from 0 to 5 kHz. The model is computed in MATLAB–Simulink, a SpeedGoat Performance Machine and a linear power supply are used for a real-time implementation. The converter under test and the test bench are presented. Some experimental results are presented, showing the feasibility and the usefulness of the proposed approach.

Freight wagons typically do not have an electrical train supply and state-of-the-art auxiliary energy generation systems as, e.g. axle generators on freight wagons lack the possibility for a cost-effective retrofit. However, emerging applications, as, e.g. anti-lock braking systems for freight trains or condition monitoring systems for the loaded goods, require electric power in the watt range. Therefore, a non-invasive auxiliary energy supply system with 22 W/dm³ (360 mW/in³) based on a non-coaxial eddy-current coupling is described and analysed in this study. It is a kinetic energy recovery system, which can extract power directly from the motion of a freight wagon's wheel. An air gap of 10 mm between the wheel and a permanent magnet rotor is set during operation, making the system a non-invasive one. A model for the transfer efficiency of the system is established and verified by measurements. The prototype including an optimised generator and an integrated active rectifier for generating a DC-output voltage is built and an electric power of 8 W can be extracted from a steel wheel moving with a surface speed of 22 m/s.