Power Management

Developing and testing power electronics components of electric vehicles

Power electronics systems are key components for electric vehicles. Our solutions accelerate the validation of DC/DC converters and other power electronics systems throughout the entire range of electric vehicle components.

Challenges

The various electric systems and devices of an electric vehicle usually operate at different DC voltage levels. For an efficient energy transfer between these systems as well as from the charging connector to the high-voltage vehicle battery, intelligently controlled power electronics components are key. They are required for both the charging system and the electric vehicle, be it a battery electric vehicle (BEV) or a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV). Power electronics components are also needed in fuel cell vehicles (FCV), since the DC voltage provided by the fuel cell must be converted to the different voltages required for the efficient operation of the various electric systems onboard the vehicle.

When charging a BEV, the electric energy flows from the charging connector of the charging station to the high-voltage vehicle battery and from there to the different low-voltage batteries (12 V and 48 V) in the vehicle.

In mild hybrid systems, the high-voltage level is usually 48 V. The vehicle’s starter generator unit is connected to a 48 V battery, while auxiliary systems, such as steering and infotainment systems, are connected to a 12 V battery. The energy transfer between these high-voltage and low-voltage systems is performed by a bidirectional DC/DC converter. 

dSPACE Solution

dSPACE offers a wide range of solutions for developing and testing control algorithms and power electronics throughout the entire range of electric vehicle components.

For developing control algorithms, you can use our powerful SCALEXIO and MicroAutoBox platforms. Extended with the latest FPGA technologies, these platforms let you control gate driver signals in the range of nanoseconds. In addition, you benefit from our ready-to-use toolboxes for motor control applications, which include powerful pulse width modulation (PWM) generation functions for controlling DC/DC converters.

The validation of control algorithms in a hardware-in-the-loop environment requires real-time-capable power electronics models. Depending on the application, these can be ready-to-use models, generic and easy-to-use tools, or circuit-specific implementations. For topology-based modeling based on the circuit diagram, our Electrical Power Systems Simulation (EPSS) Package provides a comprehensive toolbox that supports you in generating the appropriate model. Whether you are working with complex topologies or compact rectifiers and DC/DC converters: The toolbox lets you generate the real-time-capable model from the circuit diagram with only a few mouse clicks. Combined with the optimized algorithms of the EPSS toolbox, the dSPACE DS6601 and DS6602 FPGA base boards enable high switching frequencies and large model topologies. For circuits with a high number of switches, the dSPACE toolbox offers semi-automatic model splitting algorithms that analyze the overall circuit and provide information on resource consumption and stability to determine the optimal separation point for model splitting.

By using the new optical high-speed communication interface (multi-gigabit transceiver, MGT), large topologies can then be easily distributed across multiple FPGAs.

Selected Use Cases