Impact of Smart Charging on the Reliability of Charging Infrastructure

In the upcoming years, the implementation of smart charging strategies will be required to deal with the increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs). This paper investigates the impact of smart charging on the reliability and the lifetime of the charging infrastructure. An electro-thermal model of a high-power off-board charger was developed to estimate the thermal stress response of the switches on the applied smart charging current profile. The resulting junction temperature profiles were used to estimate the lifetime of the charger. The results showed that due to smart charging, the lifetime of the high-power off-board charger improved by a factor of 2.4 compared to a conventional uncoordinated charging strategy.