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The application of power electronic converters (PEC) in electric vehicles (EVs) has increased immensely as they provide enhanced controllability and flexibility to these vehicles. Accordingly, the interest in developing innovative and sustainable technologies to ensure safe and reliable operation of PECs has also risen. One of the most difficult challenges experienced during the development of reliable PECs is the design of proper thermal management systems for controlling the junction temperature and reducing the thermal cycling of power semiconductors. The addition of Active Thermal Control (ATC) can mitigate these concerns. Moreover, the performance of the thermal management system can be enhanced further by the integration of active cooling methods. An active cooling system consumes external energy for circulating cooling air or liquid within the PECs.

This paper proposes a novel 1-ϕ, Cuk based on-board electric vehicle (EV) charger with least power components. The proposed EV charger has a special feature to achieve power factor correction (PFC) at AC grid without requirement of the grid voltage and current sensors which cuts the cost and increases the power density of the EV charger along with robustness to noise. The automatic PFC at AC grid is accomplished by operating the output DC inductor in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). The proposed EV charger necessitates a minimal number of power components for positive and negative half cycles of AC grid which improves the overall efficiency of the system. This is possible due to the combination of inverting and non-inverting Cuk converters are used for each half cycle of the AC grid. Further, the presence of output inductor in the EV charger reduces the ripples in the output current which is not common with all the existing chargers in the literature.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly recognized as an effective solution in the battle against climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lithium-ion batteries have become the standard for energy storage in the automobile industry, widely used in EVs due to their superior characteristics compared to other batteries. The growing popularity of the Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) concept can be attributed to its surplus energy storage capacity, positive environmental impact, and the reliability and stability of the power grid. However, the increased utilization of the battery through these integrations can result in faster degradation and the need for replacement. As batteries are one of the most expensive components of EVs, the decision to deploy an EV in V2G operations may be uncertain due to the concerns of battery degradation from the owner’s perspective.