Unified Systems for Traction and Battery Charging of Electric Vehicles: A Sustainability Perspective

This paper presents an analysis of unified systems for traction and battery charging of electric vehicles (EVs), regarding operation modes and implementation cost, when compared to dedicated systems that perform the same functionalities. Concerning the interface of the EV battery charging system with the power grid, four operation modes are analyzed: (1)grid-to-vehicle (G2V); (2) vehicle-to-grid (V2G); (3) vehicle-to-home (V2H); and (4) vehicle-for-grid (V4G), which, byusing a unified system for traction and battery charging, can be linked both to single-phase and three-phase power grids.Moreover, a cost estimation is performed for EV unified systems and for dedicated systems that can perform the samefunctionalities when connected to the power grid, in order to prove the advantages of the system unification. The costestimation is based on two power levels, namely 6 kW (single-phase), related to domestic installations and slow batterycharging, and 50 kW (three-phase), related to industrial installations and fast battery charging. The relevance of unifiedsystems for traction and battery charging of EVs is proven for single-phase and three-phase power grids both in terms ofoperationality and implementation cost. © 2021 Tiago J. C. Sousa et al., licensed to EAI. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.