The 2018 International Power Electronics Conference
Design and Integration of the Bi-directional
Electric Vehicle Charger into the Microgrid as
Emergency Power Supply
Yang Song1, Pengcheng Li2, Yuanliang Zhao3, and Shuai Lu1
1 School of Electrical Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China
2 Electric Power Research Institute of Guizhou Power Grid Co. Ltd., Guizhou, China
3 Guizhou Power Grid Co. Ltd., Guizhou, China
*E-mail: Lushuai1975@gmail.com
Abstract- Vehicle to grid (V2G) is currently not cost
effective to justify the bi-directional EV charger as it reduces
the battery cycle life. Replacing the dedicated emergency
power supply of the load area with the bi-directional EV
charger is a more viable option. This paper introduces the
seamless integration of the bi-directional EV charger into the
distribution load areas. The proposed system design
improves the efficiency, guarantees the galvanic isolation and
supports the 3-phase-5-wire microgrid. With virtual
synchronous machine (VSM) control, instantaneous mode
switching during the islanding is achieved when EV(s) are
connected to the charger; otherwise, a black start strategy are
proposed to handle the scenario. A 50kW lab prototype was
successfully constructed, integrated and tested within an
industrial load area and the actual EV. Moreover, the lab
data show that the VSM with the proper controller tuning
can condition the low order harmonics in the microgrid load
current.
Keywords— bi-directional charger, electric vehicle,
emergency power supply, microgrid.
I. INTRODUCTION
The need for rapid charging of the electric vehicle (EV)
gave rise to the widespread construction of the EV fast dc
charger infrastructure. Therefore, potential advantages of
using EV to interact with the power grid (V2G) have been
widely investigated [1, 2], where the bi-directional power
conversion is the key. However, the cost of the EV battery
is overwhelmingly high, and V2G is currently not cost
effective to justify the bi-directional EV charger as it
reduces the battery cycle life.
An EV usually has 30-100kWh battery onboard and up
to 1C continuous discharge rate. Dispatching one or more
EVs to plug into the bi-directional chargers in a load area
during power outage could supply enough power for the
islanded microgrid. This would handily eliminate the
needs for the backup diesel generator and the battery based
emergency power supply (EPS). Compared to V2G, the
EPS function is a more viable option for a bi-directional
charger.
Commercially off-the-shelf EV chargers are all
unidirectional, while the bi-directional charger is
introduced in [3], where many converter topologies were
investigated for the bi-directional EV charger.
When working as EPS, the normally grid tied AC/DC
converter in the charger needs to work under the voltage
©2018 IEEJ 3698
source mode, i.e. microgrid islanding mode. [4-6] studied
the power management strategy for the seamless transition
between grid-tied and islanding modes. There are two
types of the strategies. First is to switch from the current to
the voltage mode when disconnected from the grid, where
the transition time depends on the islanding detection
algorithm. Second is to use the same control for both
modes. As in [6], the same mode-adaptive droop curves
are used for both modes. Unlike the conditional droop
control that reflect only the external characteristics of SG,
virtual synchronous machines (VSM) adds the virtual
inertia to the total equivalent grid inertia to handle the grid
disturbances [7, 8]. [9] applies VSM concept to a single-
phase charger for V2G services, where a virtual 2-phase
system is used for active and reactive power calculation to
diminish the power oscillations.
In the section II of this paper, a bi-directional EV
charger based EPS system is proposed and explained in
detail. During the power outage, if the battery SOC and the
power rating of the EV connected to the charger meets the
EPS requirements, it operates in voltage source mode to
supply the islanded microgrid. Section III first introduces
the VSM applied to the AC/DC control, and the mode
switching strategies are proposed to synchronize the power
between the AC/DC and DC/DC. For the scenario when
EV is not connected to the charger, a system black start
solution is proposed. Simulation results are presented in
section IV. In section V, an 50kW bi-directional charger
prototype was constructed, tested and demonstrated as the
EPS with a connected EV, by replacing the backup diesel
generator and conventional EPS in an industrial load area.
Experimental results are provided to verify the
effectiveness of the EPS functions of the bi-directional
charger. Finally, section VI concludes the paper.
II. EPS AND THE PROPOSED BI-DIRECTIONAL CHARGER
INTEGRATION
A. Load area EPS integration
A typical building load area diagram is shown in Fig. 1.
There are two 380V AC buses, each is connected to a 10kV
distribution transformer. The two 380V AC buses are
interconnected for redundancy. There are various loads of
different priority, and the supply to some important loads
such as the elevators and fire extinguishing loads may not
be interrupted. When one bus faults, the redundant bus
 The 2018 International Power Electronics Conference
Fig. 1. A load area with the conventional EPS replaced by the bi-directional charger based EPS
supplies the vital loads on the failed one. When the main
distribution grid fails, the backup diesel generator will be
started to supply the load area. The link to the main grid
and some low priority load circuits are disconnected so that
the diesel generator is not overloaded.
In this paper, the diesel generator is replaced by the
proposed bi-directional EV charger based EPS. During
power outage, EVs can be plugged in. The energy from the
EV battery pack supplies the load area via the charger.
Obviously, this utilizes the existing facility and avoids
the installation of the conventional EPS, so that the extra
cost for bi-directional power conversion is well justified.
B. Proposed Bi-directional EV Charger based EPS
The bi-directional charger based EPS system design is
proposed in Fig. 2. It regularly charges EVs. When the grid
faults, it uses the EV batteries to supply power to the
islanded load area (microgrid).
Many grid-tied EPS simply uses a single stage AC/DC
connected with the battery bank. But to follow the wide
range of the EV battery packs (250V-650V for example)
as a charger, an extra DC/DC conversion is needed. In a
regular EV charger, the required galvanic isolation
between the EV and the grid is usually realized by the high
frequency transformer in the DC/DC converter. This
isolation requirement introduces extra power losses and
complexity of the system.
With the additional EPS function, a 3 phase 5 wire
system is needed for the islanded load area, so that a grid
frequency isolation transformer is needed anyway to
connect the AC/DC. It has the start configuration on the
grid side, the neutral and earth ground lines are tapped
Fig. 2. Proposed Bi-directional EV Charger based EPS
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from its grounded neutral, so that there is no need for high
frequency isolation in the DC/DC, and the system can be
simplified with the improved efficiency.
The proposed system connects the grid via the static
switches (STS) made of a pair of thyristors, so that
microgrid could be instantaneously disconnected from the
grid when it faults.
The AC/DC uses a 3-phase VSI topology in Fig.3. The
grid side voltage is 380V, and the common dc bus is
controlled at 700V. The high voltage side of the bi-
directional DC/DC is the common dc bus and the low
voltage side connects to the EV battery via the charger post,
which harbors the charger harness and connector. It also
has auxiliary parts such as the DC contactor, power meters,
control panel and isolation detector, etc. More importantly,
it has a charger controller board that communicates with
the battery management system (BMS) of the battery pack
onboard an EV and commands the bi-directional power
output and the operation modes of the AC/DC and DC/DC.
III. CONTROL SCHEMES OF THE EV CHARGER BASED EPS
A. Control Scheme of AC/DC converter
The VSM controller similar to [7] is programmed for
the control of the proposed EV charger based EPS to
achieve a seamless transition between the grid-tied and
islanding mode. Also, good power distribution between
multiple EV chargers can be realized when the load area
needs more power and extended islanding time.
As in Fig. 4, the VSM controller could be treated as an
extension of the conventional V/F control and PQ control.
It also integrates the droop curve, so the converter could

Fig. 3. Topology of AC/DC and DC/DC converters.
Fig. 4. The VSM controller of the AC/DC converter.
emulate the external characteristics of a synchronous
machine (SM). The virtual torque produces the equivalent
active power, the inertia model indirectly adjusts the active
power and the angular frequency, and the reactive power
is controlled by the virtual excitation voltage in the
electrical model. Furthermore, it simulates the inertia
characteristics of the SM, which improves the stability of
the whole microgrid.
Fig. 5 expands on the VSM voltage and current loops.
The voltage control loop stabilizes the voltage when it
supplies the microgrid, while the inner current control loop
improves the dynamics of the system and suppress the
harmonic distortion in the inductor (ac output) currents of
the AC/DC. It is instructive to analyze that in the islanding
mode, when the microgrid has the nonlinear loads, the load
currents contain dominantly the 5th and 7th harmonics. As
the AC/DC inner current loop suppresses the harmonic
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Fig. 5. The details of the voltage and current loops of the AC/DC.
current output, these harmonics in the load currents will
have to go through the capacitor branch of the LC filter
and causes distortion on the voltages of the microgrid. The
distorted voltages will then interact with the nonlinear
loads and reduces their current harmonics. This interesting
effect will be verified by the simulation and experimental
results.
B. Synchronization between AC/DC and DC/DC during
the mode transition
When the grid faults, AC/DC works as a voltage source
to supply the islanded microgrid loads. When one or more
EVs are connected to the bi-directional charger, 3
scenarios exist and their individual control schemes are
designed to synchronize the power between AC/DC and
DC/DC and facilitate rapid mode transition.
1) The common dc bus is stabilized by the AC/DC, and
the DC/DC controls the charging current of the battery
pack, whose voltage is low (250-400V). In this scenario,
when the STS islands the microgrid, the common dc bus is
to be stabilized by the DC/DC that discharges the battery;
then the AC/DC switches to the voltage mode such as the
VSM. The mode switch is a little slow (up to 200ms).
2) When all conditions are the same as the scenario 1,
but the battery pack voltage is high enough (>600V), there
is no wait time for DC/DC mode switching as the battery
pack clamps the common dc bus voltage through the
diodes of the DC/DC, and the AC/DC switches to the
voltage mode instantaneously. Here, the switching time
will be mostly communication delays from the STS
islanding action to the AC/DC (up to 50ms).
3) The common dc bus is stabilized by the DC/DC, and
the AC/DC runs in VSM mode and adjust the grid power
to indirectly control the charging current of the battery
pack. In this scenario, the switching time to islanding mode
is none and only STS disconnection time (<10ms) exists.
Without the closed loop current control by the DC/DC, the
battery pack charging current will have 6th and 12th
harmonics, due to the 5th, 7th, 11th and 13th harmonics in
grid voltages.
C. Black Start of the bi-directional charger based EPS
When the EV is not plugged in during the power outage,
it is like a conventional diesel generator EPS, which takes

a long period to start and supply the loads. EVs nearby are
dispatched to plug into the bi-directional charger.
The secondary control system of the whole bidirectional
charger system is powered up by two redundant supplies,
i.e. the grid 3-phase power and the battery power. If the
EV is not connected when power outage occurs, the
charger system has no controller power. Even after the EV
is manually plugged in, the charger cannot communicate
with the EV BMS and the main contactor of the EV battery
pack remains open, so the whole system will not startup.
To solve this problem, a new charger controller board
integrated with a rechargeable battery is designed.
The proposed black start procedure is shown in Fig. 6.
The charger controller communicates with the EV battery
pack once an EV is plugged in. After the handshake, the
EV BMS closes the main contactor of the battery pack and
the input/output capacitors of the DC/DC are charged to
the battery voltage through a soft start path. Then, the
whole secondary control is powered up, the DC/DC
establishes the common dc bus voltage, then the AC/DC
enters the VSM mode, finally the load switch is closed to
Fig. 6. The black start procedure of the EPS system.
supply the islanded load area.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed system is simulated. First, the simulation
includes the whole black start process from an EV
connecting to the bi-directional charger till the power
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supply of the microgrid is recovered by the EPS. Herein,
the DC/DC stabilizes the common dc bus voltage by
boosting the EV battery voltage, then the AC/DC works in
VSM mode to feed the microgrid. In Fig. 7, the 5 traces are
the ac output voltages of the AC/DC, ac output currents of
the AC/DC, the common dc bus voltage, the voltage and
the current of the EV’s battery pack, respectively.
Fig. 7 shows the following steps:
1) When the EV plugs in, the battery charges the output
capacitor of the DC/DC by the soft start path. At the same
time, the common dc bus is charged to the battery voltage
via the diodes of the DC/DC.
2) The DC/DC charges the common dc bus to 700V.
3) The AC/DC outputs voltages that conform to the grid
standards.
4) The circuit breaker on AC side is closed to supply the
microgrid. The AC/DC and DC/DC handle the sudden
load changes.
Fig. 8 shows the simulation results of the instant
transition of the EPS system from the grid tied mode to the
islanding mode when EVs are plugged in the bi-directional
chargers. Similar traces are displayed as in Fig. 7, except
that the output voltages and currents of the AC/DC are
Fig. 7. Bi-directional charger black start process simulation.

Fig. 8. Bi-directional charger from grid-tied to islanding mode
transition simulation.
replaced by the voltages and currents of the microgrid
loads. During the normal grid-tied mode, the EV
connected to the charger is being charged. When power
outage occurs (0.03s in the simulation), the EV battery
pack has a 80% SOC. The transition is smooth without
large voltage sag on the ac and dc sides. During the
transition, the battery current direction instantly reversed
to supply power to the load area.
As predicted and analyzed in subsection A of Section
III, when nonlinear loads exist in the microgrid, the load
currents contain significant harmonic components in the
grid-tied mode. Then in the islanding mode, the harmonic
components in the load currents are greatly decreased.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A 50kW bi-directional charger prototype has been
constructed as in Fig.9. A commercially available EV with
the following Li-ion battery pack parameters (100A*hr,
250V-400V, up to 1C continuous discharging rate) is
connected to function as the EPS. A bi-directional charger
is used as the interface between the EV and the microgrid.
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Fig. 9. The 50kW bi-directional charger based EPS prototype.
The bi-directional charger power conversion subsystem
has 50kW AC/DC converter and DC/DC converter
prototypes. The microgrid is connected to the utility grid
by a Static Transfer Switch (STS) to realize the instant
islanding transition.
Fig. 10 shows the experimental results of the bi-
directional charger black start process. The 4 traces in Fig.
10 are the load voltage (line to line) and load current, the
common DC bus voltage between the AC/DC and DC/DC
converters, and the current of the EV battery pack,
respectively
The experimental results are close to the simulation
waveforms. When the EV is connected to the charger port,
the controller board of the charger communicates with the
BMS of EV. As the EV battery pack still has 80% SOC,
the charger closes the input contactor of DC/DC and the
control power supply is resumed for both the DC/DC and
AC/DC. As the DC/DC soft start circuit was not activated
during the test, there is inrush current from the battery
when the DC/DC input contactor closes. After the
controller initialization, the DC/DC starts to charge the
common DC bus voltage to 700V, then AC/DC starts and
supplies voltage to the microgrid. Then the loads in the
microgrid are engaged in sequence, the phase currents
increase accordingly until the full loads in the microgrid is
resumed.
The instant islanding transition experimental waveform
of the proposed bi-directional charger are shown in Fig. 11.
The EV stays plugged in and already charged to an 80%
SOC, then the power outage starts. The STS disconnect the
grid connection of the load area. In both the grid-tied and
the islanding modes, the DC/DC regulates the common
DC bus voltage and the AC/DC runs the VSM control. The
 The 2018 International Power Electronics Conference

Fig. 10. The experimental results of the bi-directional charger black Fig. 11. The experimental results of the bi-directional charger instant
start process. islanding transition.

transition is smooth without voltage sag on the ac and dc

sides. During the transition, the battery current direction
instantly reversed to supply power to the load area. Note
that the difference in the voltage amplitude before and after
the transition is not the transients but due to the lower
voltage set point for the microgrid mode and the higher
grid voltage. In this control scheme, the common DC bus
is well regulated by the DC/DC, while the tracking
accuracy of the battery charging or discharging current is
not guaranteed, as the low order harmonics is obvious in
the battery current waveform.
As analyzed and simulated in this paper, by stabilizing
the inner current loop outputs of the AC/DC VSM control,
it tends to condition the load current harmonics in the
islanding mode. In essence, the more sinusoidal AC/DC Fig. 12. FFT analysis of Vab line voltage.
output currents force the load current harmonics to flow
into the AC/DC filter capacitor branch and induces more
voltage distortion. The distorted voltages applied to the VI. CONCLUSION
load area tend to make the load current more sinusoidal.
As shown in Fig. 11, the load current in the grid connected A bi-directional EV charger based EPS system is
mode has significant harmonic components. In the proposed in this paper. The system eliminates the needs for
islanding mode, the waveform of the load current was the backup diesel generator and the conventional battery
improved at the cost of more harmonic distortions in the based EPS for a load area. The bi-directional EV charger
voltages. It can be seen from the FFT analysis of Vab, as in uses a two-stage power conversion. For seamless transition
Fig. 12. The blue bar is the harmonic component of the between the grid-tied and islanding modes, the VSM
grid voltages, while the orange bar is the harmonic control is used in the AC/DC converter. When the grid
component of the microgrid voltages in the islanding mode. faults and the EV is plugged in, 3 control schemes for
power synchronization between the AC/DC and DC/DC
and their transient performance are analyzed. If the EV is
not currently connected, a black start procedure is

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proposed to restore power to the load area. The proposed

system is validated by the simulation and lab tests, where
a full scale prototype is constructed and supplies an actual
industrial load area by a connected EV. Compared to V2G,
the EPS function is a more viable option for a bi-
directional EV charger, and it has potentials to promote
much wider usage of the bi-directional EV charger.

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