Position Sensorless PMSM Drive for Solar PV-Battery Light Electric Vehicle with Regenerative Braking Capability

Major impediments towards effectuating electric vehicles (EVs) on the road, are cost, range anxiety and the battery re-charge time. In this work, a PMSM (Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor) driven solar PV-battery based three-wheeler EV with regenerative braking feature is designed and investigated to address these issues. In addition, a model reference adaptive control-based position sensorless operation is successfully incorporated into the drive to improve reliability and to reduce the cost. A detailed design and selection of the solar PV array and power converters for the system topology are introduced in this paper. The steady state and dynamic operation of the system configuration is studied in MATLAB/ Simulink and test results demonstrating the sensorless vector control are presented here. This simple topology improves the range, efficiency and longevity of a three-wheeler EVs.