A High-Efficiency Wireless Power Transfer System for Taiwan’s First Autonomous Electric Boat Charging

This study presents the system architecture and demonstration of a high-efficiency wireless power transfer (WPT) system for Taiwan’s first autonomous electric boat built by Taiwan Ship and Ocean Industries R&D Center (SOIC). We adopt a series-parallel resonance compensation design in the proposed WPT system to achieve high-efficiency power conversion. Due to the boat’s shaking, along with coil misalignment and the low coupling coefficient, a set of transmission coils with a flat magnetic field is designed to improve the system’s efficiency. Furthermore, the characteristic evaluation and numerical analysis of transmission coils are made by CST Studio Suite®. The experimental results show that the developed system can transfer 7 kW for a large air gap (20 cm), and the highest efficiency is up to 94.62%. The developed system operating frequencies complies with the SAE J2954 standard. Besides, the developed system operates at an average power transfer efficiency that is higher than 90% and provides good horizontal misalignment tolerance up to ±100 mm. In summary, the results validate that Taiwan’s first WPT system integrated with the autonomous electric boat, evidenced on the Kaohsiung Love River, Taiwan.