Microchip unveils new EV charger reference design

     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 electric vehicle chargers. In an effort to speed time to market for electric vehicle chargers, Microchip Technology announced three flexible, scalable electric vehicle charger reference designs. These include single-phase AC home chargers, three-phase AC commercial chargers that support Open Charging Point Protocol (OCPP) and System on Chip (SoC), and three-phase AC commercial chargers that support OCPP and displays.

     Most of the active components of the EV charger reference design are available from Microchip, including single-chip microcomputer (MCU), analog front end, memory, connectivity, and power conversion. This greatly simplifies the integration process, enabling manufacturers to accelerate time to market for new charging solutions.

     Joe Thomsen, corporate vice president of Microchip's Digital Signal Controllers business unit, said: "Microchip's E-Mobility team is focused on developing reference designs that customers can use directly and benefit from. We hope to help our customers shorten the design cycle by providing a complete solution for the new EV charger reference design, as well as providing hardware, software and technical support."

     Microchip's EV charger reference design enables 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 documentation and source code, as well as software stacks that have been tested and conform to communication protocols, including OCPP. OCPP provides a standard protocol for manufacturers to communicate between a charging point or station and a central system

     The single-phase AC home electric vehicle charger reference design provides an economical and convenient solution for home charging using single-phase power supply. The on-board high-performance energy metering unit with automatic calibration simplifies the production process. The design incorporates safety protection features, including protection ground neutral line (PEN) fault detection and residual current device (RCD) detection.

     The three-phase AC commercial EV charger with OCPP and Wi-Fi® SoC reference design is suitable for high-end residential and commercial charging stations. It integrates the OCPP 1.6 protocol stack for communicating with the charging network and the Wi-Fi SoC for remote management.

     Three-phase AC Commercial EV chargers with OCPP and display support are designed for commercial and public charging stations with a focus on robust operation, including completion of an architectural review according to UL 2231. It supports two-way charging up to 22 kW and a modular architecture. The design also features a robust graphical user interface (GUI) with a thin-film transistor (TFT) screen and touch input to withstand harsh environments.