A Study on a Contactless Charging System for Moving Electric Vehicles with a Full-Scale Model

摘要

Recently, electric vehicles (EVs) have attracted attention as environmental awareness grows. However, current EVs have some problems such as short cruising distance and long charging time; consequently, it is currently difficult for EVs to travel long distances without frequent and long-time charging. This circumstance has stimulated researches into contactless charging systems for moving EVs. These systems can be categorized into two types (segmented coil designs and single-coil designs), and we have been studying single-coil designs as they are superior in system simplicity and equipment costs. However, the coupling between the coils is low in these designs, and consequently, it has been considered to be difficult to efficiently transmit power to an arbitrary load. Hence, in this study the LC-Booster method has been applied to such a system in order to overcome the above-mentioned problem. This paper presents the evaluation results at the time of supplying the full-scale Feeding coil with power of approximately 1 kW, and demonstrates that the load can stably receive power even while it is moving on the Feeding coil in the traveling direction, with transmission efficiency of nearly 80%.