New perspectives for the electric vehicle (EV) operation in smart grids and smart homes context are presented. Nowadays, plugged-in EVs are equipped with on-board battery chargers just to perform the charging process from the electrical power grid (G2V – grid-to-vehicle mode). Although this is the main goal of such battery chargers, maintaining the main hardware structure and changing the digit...

Recently, adopting mobile energy chargers to replenish the energy supply of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks has gained increasing attention from the research community. Different from energy harvesting systems, the utilization of mobile energy chargers is able to provide more reliable energy supply than the dynamic energy harvested from the surrounding environment. While pioneering wor...

A switch-mode rectifier (SMR) can provide adjustable and well-regulated DC output voltage from the available AC source with good line drawn power quality. Depending on the input/output voltage transfer characteristics, the schematics, the operation quadrant, and control, SMRs possess many classifications and application. Typical potential application examples include grid powered motor drives, ...

Wireless rechargeable sensor networks are becoming crucial and important in recent years for the advancement of wireless energy transmission technology. The previous research showed that not all of sensors can be recharged due to the limitation of energy capacity that mobile chargers can carry. If a sensor playing a critical role in a sensing task cannot function as usual due to exhausted energ...

An experimental comparison of single-phase active rectifiers for electric vehicle (EV) battery chargers is presented and discussed. Active rectifiers are used in on-board EV battery chargers as front-end converters to interface the power grid aiming to preserve the power quality. In this paper, four topologies of active rectifiers are compared: traditional power-factor-correction; symmetrical b...

The growing attention for plug-in electric vehicles, and the associated high-performance demands, have initiated a development trend towards highly efficient and compact on-board battery chargers. These isolated ac–dc converters are most commonly realized using two conversion stages, combining a non-isolated power factor correction (PFC) rectifier with an isolated dc–dc converter. This, however...

The transportation industry now accounts for approximately a quarter of worldwide energy-related direct CO2 emissions, and governments all around the globe have committed to converting their fossil-fuel vehicles zero-emission ones by adopting electric vehicles. Current (EV) can store 18 100 kWh energy, which may be employed not only commuting but also other purposes such as delivering energy ho...

Sonic jet chargers have originally been used in aerosol measurement devices for particle charging and neutralization. Here, our goal was to study if this charger type could be used in particle control devices in which particle concentrations and gas volumes are much higher. The study includes charging efficiency tests in a laboratory and with a commercial 20 kW wood pellet burner. Actual partic...

Battery maintainers are widely used in marine and ground vehicles whose batteries have cycles of operation involving long periods of non-active life. Durability of such batteries, without proper maintenance, does not exceed one year. Extension of the battery life-time requires very thorough monitoring and periodic, preferably automatic recharging to replenish lost charge due to battery selfdisc...

The wide-scale adoption and accelerated growth of electric vehicle (EV) use increasing demand for faster charging necessitate the research development power electronic converters to achieve high-power, compact, reliable EV solutions. Although fast concept is often associated with off-board DC chargers, importance on-board AC undeniable battery capacities. This article comprehensively reviews ga...