Modernization, control, and energy management of an industrial electric vehicle with solar energy supply

In the context of reducing carbon emissions, electric vehicles seems to be a good solution, especially when they are charged by a solar powered carport or charging station. This paper presents modernization, control, and energy management of an industrial electric vehicle with a solar energy supply. This scheme is applied to a previously existing electric forklift using Lead Acid battery and a Direct Current motor, which are replaced, by a new Lithium Ion battery and a Permanent Magnet Synchronous motor. The work starts with the sizing of new elements of the electric vehicle and the solar charging rooftop, then the mathematical modeling of all the elements of the whole system is performed. The perturbation and observation technic was used to assure the extraction of maximum power from the solar panels to charge the electric vehicle batteries. The Backstepping control technic was used to control the Permanent Magnet Synchronous motor in order to assure the pursuit of the desired speed. The models and the control technics are implemented and simulated in MATLAB SIMULINK software to evaluate the efficiency and performances of the adopted system.