Highly efficient contactless electrical energy transmission system

This paper proposes a new concept for a contactless electrical energy transmission system for an automated guided vehicle. The system has rechargeable batteries on the vehicle and electrical energy is supplied at a specific place. When electric power is supplied to the vehicle, it runs automatically and approaches the battery charger. Therefore, a comparatively large gap is needed between the primary transformer at the battery charger and the secondary transformer on the vehicle in order to prevent damage which would be caused by a collision. In this case, a drop of the transformer coupling rate due to the large gap must be prevented. In conventional contactless electrical energy transmission technology, since electric power is received by a pick-up coil from a power line, a large-sized transformer is required. And when the distance over which the car runs is long, the copper loss of the line also increases. The developed system adopts a high frequency inverter using a soft switching method to miniaturize the transformer. The system has a coupling rate of 0.88 for a transformer gap length of 10 mm and can operate at 91% efficiency.