Power Quality Assessment of PFC Topologies Applied to Electric Vehicle Chargers Connected to Low-Voltage Grids

The interconnection of electric vehicle chargers without proper planning of electrical power grids can lead to power quality issues, such as an increase in harmonic pollution and a low power factoR, requiring countermeasures to mitigate these impacts. Hence, power factor correction circuits are usually designed for electric vehicles. In this context, the aim of this work is to evaluate three consolidated power factor correction topologies (capacitor dividers, power factor correction boost and Totem Pole), as well as an electric vehicle charger topology without power factor correction circuit implemented, focusing on the power quality aspect of the grid. Simulation results show that without the presence of a power factor correction circuit, high harmonic levels and a low power factor cor¬rection occur. Moreover, by implementing the passive correction circuit, the harmonic pollution is partially mitigated, but a low power factor is still present. On the other hand, active power factor correction topologies obtained the best performance for increasing the power factor. Particularly, the results show that the Totem Pole topology stands out, since the boost power factor correction topology resulted high harmonics pollution at high frequencies (i.e. supra-harmonics).