Control Implementation for Battery Charging in Autonomous Locomotive on dSPACE 1104 DSP Board

The aim of this paper is the implementation of the control algorithm of a charging system for a battery power electric vehicle (autonomous locomotive). Because modern electric vehicle use lithium based batteries, the charging system must assure the proper charging conditions, specific to the battery type. The control algorithm implementation was done in the Matlab Simulink environment, for the dSPACE DS1104 prototyping board. The experimental validation of the correct implementation of the control algorithm was done on a high power, specially designated experimental stand. The system gives good performance, the current absorbed from the power grid having low harmonic distortion and unity power factor. The voltage harmonic distortion is rather high in the power grid transformer output (which is the input of the battery charging system), but considerably lower at the power transformer input, and within standards.