Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Converter for Electric Vehicle Speed Control

In this paper a multilevel converter is used to control the speed of an Electric Vehicle (EV). Vector control is applied to control an induction motor and a variable speed profile with acceleration and deceleration stages is analyzed. During the deceleration stage, energy should be recovered from the machine. For this purpose, the power converter must be bidirectional in current in order to ensure regenerative braking during deceleration stages. The motor drive´s operation is performed. The system´s behavior is investigated for reference speed variation driving conditions. The generated control signal and induction motor´s electrical characteristics such as current and voltage are analyzed and the batteries state of charge variation is monitored.