Enhancing Power Factor of EV Chargers: Sustainability & Future Prospects Using Capacitor Banks & Synchronous Condensers

The widespread deployment of wireless electric vehicle charging systems poses major issues for distribution networks such as high reactive power demand, voltage fluctuation, voltage imbalance, power factor issues and harmonic distortion. This study suggests a hybrid reactive power compensation method, which is a switched capacitor bank for steady state support and synchronous condenser for fast dynamic compensation. The charging-system model developed in the project contains the 3-phase grid source, measurement and control units, AC-DC converter, lithium-ion battery and proposed compensation devices. The results of the study indicate that the hybrid system is able to effectively control the sudden changes in reactive power during multi-step wireless charging scenarios. After a large short-term reactive power surge, the power factor recovers to 0.999 in about 4ms and settles at 0.9914. The system also ensures stable battery charging, regulated terminal voltage and better supply current–voltage alignment, whilst retaining the same active power transfer. The proposed method is less complex in implementation, easier to realize and less switching stress than the active power-factor-correction rectifier. Thus, the hybrid configuration offers a viable, robust and scalable power quality enhancement solution as well as wireless electric vehicle charging infrastructure.