The reliability and performance of electric vehicle (EV) chargers are critical to driving global market adoption. Electric vehicle manufacturers are focusing on providing the most rugged, all-weather and user-friendly EV chargers. To accelerate time to market for EV chargers, Microchip Technology today released three flexible and scalable EV charger reference designs, including a single-phase AC home charger, a three-phase AC commercial charger supporting the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and a system-on-chip (SoC), and a three-phase AC commercial charger supporting OCPP and a display.
Most of the active components of the EV charger reference design are available from Microchip, including microcontrollers (MCUs), analog front ends, memory, connectivity and power conversion. This greatly simplifies the integration process, enabling manufacturers to accelerate time to market for new charging solutions.
“Microchip’s E-Mobility team is focused on developing reference designs that customers can use and benefit from directly,” said Joe Thomsen, corporate vice president of Microchip’s Digital Signal Controller business unit. “We want to help customers shorten their design cycles by providing complete solutions, such as this new EV charger reference design, along with hardware, software and technical support.”
Microchip’s EV charger reference designs enable manufacturers to adopt a range of solutions to meet the needs of residential and commercial charging applications, depending on the target market. These reference designs provide complete hardware design files and source code, as well as tested and compliant software stacks for communication protocols, including OCPP. OCPP provides manufacturers with a standard protocol for communication between charging points or charging stations and central systems. The protocol is designed to enable interoperability in charging applications regardless of the network or vendor.
Microchip EV Charger Reference Design Highlights
The Single-Phase AC Home EV Charger Reference Design provides an economical and convenient solution for home charging using single-phase power. On-board high-performance energy metering with automatic calibration simplifies the production process. The design integrates safety protection features, including protective earthed neutral (PEN) fault detection and residual current device (RCD) detection.
The 3-Phase AC Commercial EV Charger Reference Design with OCPP and Wi-Fi® SoC is intended for high-end residential and commercial charging stations. It integrates an OCPP 1.6 protocol stack for communicating with the charging network and a Wi-Fi SoC for remote management.
The 3-Phase AC Commercial EV Charger Reference Design with OCPP and Display is intended for commercial and public charging stations, with a focus on robust operation, including completion of an architectural review per UL 2231. It supports bidirectional charging capabilities up to 22 kW and a modular architecture. The design also features a ruggedized graphical user interface (GUI) with a thin-film transistor (TFT) screen and touch input to withstand harsh environments.
The global EV charger landscape is complex and fragmented, but Microchip can provide key technologies and solutions that greatly simplify the design and deployment process. In addition to the reference design, Microchip provides hardware, software and global technical support.
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