Microchip EV Charger Reference Designs Include Bidirectional Charging

• What you’ll learn:
• Reference designs for EV chargers are available for AC residential as well as for high-end residential and commercial charging stations.
• A UL2331-compliant architecture that supports up to 22 kW with bidirectional charging capabilities.
• Complete hardware design files and source code are provided with software stacks that are tested and compliant to communication protocols, including OCPP.

The reliability and performance of electric-vehicle (EV) chargers and EV supply equipment (EVSE) are critical to drive global market adoption. EV manufacturers are focused on delivering the most robust, weather-resistant, and user-friendly EV chargers and EVSEs. 

To accelerate the time-to-market of an EV charger or EVSE, Microchip Technology announced three flexible and scalable EV charger reference designs: Single-Phase AC Residential EVSE, Three-Phase AC Commercial with Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and System-on-Chip (SoC), and Bidirectional Three-Phase AC Commercial with OCPP and Display.

Most of the active components for the EV charger and EVSE reference designs are available from Microchip, including the microcontroller (MCU), analog front-end, memory, connectivity, and power conversion. This helps significantly streamline the integration process, enabling manufacturers to speed up development of new charging solutions.

“Microchip’s E-Mobility team is focused on developing reference designs that our customers can directly use and benefit from,” said Joe Thomsen, corporate vice president of Microchip’s digital signal controller business unit. “We want to help our customers shorten design cycles by offering complete solutions such as these new EV charger references designs, while also supplying the hardware, software, and technical support.” 

The new EV charger and EVSE reference designs enable manufacturers to scale, depending on the target market, with a range of solutions to meet the needs of residential and commercial charging applications. These reference designs offer complete hardware design files and source code with software stacks that are tested and compliant to communication protocols, including the OCPP. 

OCPP offers manufacturers a standard protocol to communicate between the charge point or charging station and a central system. This protocol is designed to enable interoperability of the charging applications regardless of the network or vendor.

Highlights of Microchip’s EV Charger Reference Designs

The Single-Phase AC Residential EVSE Reference Design offers a cost-effective and convenient solution for home charging, where a single-phase supply is used. The on-board, high-performance, energy-metering device with automatic calibration simplifies the production process. The design has integrated safety protection features such as protective earth neutral (PEN) fault detection and residual current device (RCD) detection.

The Three-Phase AC Commercial with OCPP and Wi-Fi SoC EV Charger Reference Design is intended for high-end residential and commercial charging stations. It features OCPP 1.6 stack integration for communication with charging networks and Wi-Fi SoC for remote management.

The Three-Phase AC Commercial with OCPP and Display Bidirectional EV Charger Reference Design caters to commercial and public charging stations with a focus on robust operation, including a completed architecture review according to UL 2231. It supports up to 22 kW with bidirectional charging capabilities and a modular architecture. The design also features a robust graphical user interface (GUI) with a thin-film transistor (TFT) screen and touch input designed to withstand harsh environments.

Navigating the global EV charging landscape is complex and fragmented, but Microchip offers the technologies and solutions to significantly simplify the design process through implementation. Beyond the reference designs, the company supplies the hardware, software, and global technical support. Visit Microchip’s website to learn more about its EV and PHEV solutions.

Development Tools

The EV reference designs are supported by the MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to help designers minimize development time, as well as MPLAB Harmony v3 and MPLAB Code Configurator.

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