On Board Charging

Plug-in hybrid/electric vehicles (xEV) include a high voltage battery sub-system that requires some form of external charging. Multiple methods to accomplish this task are available. Some of them are built into the vehicle itself (On Board Charger or OBC), while others are external and may be incorporated through a wired connection (Fixed Charger) or through wireless energy transfer (Wireless Charger).

The Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) are equipped with an OBC, which is responsible for charging the battery. These chargers are built directly onto the PHEV itself, and therefore must be efficient and lightweight. They come in a variety of power levels, which correspond directly to the battery charge time. The chargers’ power level is proportional to the amount of power available from the AC line input (120 VAC, 240 VAC, 3-phase, etc.) The most popular OBC power levels are 3.3 kW, 6.6 kW, 11 kW, and 22 kW; each of which corresponds to a different common AC power level.

Since OBCs are completely high-voltage systems, the most common semiconductor devices used are IGBTs, Superjunction MOSFETs, and SiC semiconductors. Typical chargers consist of many cascaded stages, namely: input rectification, power-factor correction, DC-DC conversion, isolation, output rectification, and output filtering.


On Board Charging Overview


Related Products
Product Description
AEC Qualified Intelligent Power Modules (IPMs)
AEC Qualified Gate Drivers
AEC Qualified Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs
AEC Qualified MOSFETs
AEC Qualified IGBTs
AEC Qualified Silicon Carbide (SiC) Diodes
AEC Qualified Rectifiers
AEC Qualified Current Sense Amplifiers
AEC Qualified Offline Controllers

Related Information
3.3kW Descriptions
DN05107/D 3.3KW On Board EV Charger
AND9813/D Electric Vehicle OBC System Using Power Modules
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TND6320/D 6.6 kW On Board EV Charger Reference Design
11 kW- 22 kW Descriptions
TND6318/D On Board Charger (OBC) LLC Converter
AND9957/D How to Interface with the 3 Phase PFC Evaluation Board
SEC-3PH-11-OBC-EVB Three-phase On Board Charger (OBC) PFC-LLC platform
Asset ID Asset Title
AND9957 On Board Charger (OBC) Three-phase PFC Converter
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