Microchip’s new EV charger reference designs

EV manufacturers are focused on delivering the most robust, weather-resistant and user-friendly EV chargers. To accelerate the time to market of an EV charger, Microchip Technology has announces three flexible and scalable EV Charger Reference Designs including a Single-Phase AC Residential, a Three-Phase AC Commercial with Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and System-on-Chip (SoC), and a Three-Phase AC Commercial with OCPP and Display.

Most of the active components for the EV charger reference designs are available from Microchip, including the microcontroller (MCU), analog front-end, memory, connectivity, and power conversion. This significantly streamlines the integration process, enabling manufacturers to speed time to market for new charging solutions.

“Microchip’s E-Mobility team is focused on developing reference designs that our customers can directly use and benefit from,” said Joe Thomsen, Corporate Vice President of Microchip’s digital signal controller business unit. “We want to help our customers shorten design cycles by offering complete solutions such as these new EV charger references designs, while also supplying the hardware, software, and technical support.”

Microchip’s EV charger reference designs enable manufacturers to scale depending on the target market with a range of solutions to meet the needs of residential and commercial charging applications. These reference designs offer complete hardware design files and source code with software stacks that are tested and compliant to communication protocols, including OCPP. OCPP offers manufacturers a standard protocol to communicate between the charge point or charging station and a central system. This protocol is designed to enable interoperability of the charging applications regardless of the network or vendor.

Highlights of Microchip’s EV charger reference designs

• The Single-Phase AC Residential EV Charger Reference Design offers a cost-effective and convenient solution for home charging, where a single-phase supply is used.
• The on-board high-performance energy metering device with automatic calibration simplifies the production process. The design has integrated safety protection features including Protective Earth Neutral (PEN) fault detection and Residual Current Device (RCD) detection.
• The Three-Phase AC Commercial with OCPP and Wi-Fi SoC EV Charger Reference Design is intended for high-end residential and commercial charging stations. It features OCPP 1.6 stack integration for communication with charging networks and Wi-Fi SoC for remote management.

The Three-Phase AC Commercial with OCPP and Display EV Charger Reference Design caters to commercial and public charging stations with a focus on robust operation including a completed architecture review according to UL 2231. It is designed to support up to 22kW with bidirectional charging capabilities and a modular architecture. The design also features a robust Graphical User Interface (GUI) with a Thin-Film Transistor (TFT) screen and touch input designed to withstand harsh environments.

Navigating the global EV charging landscape is complex and fragmented, but Microchip offers the key technologies and solutions to significantly simplify the design process through implementation. Beyond the reference designs, Microchip supplies the hardware, software and global technical support.

Development tools

The EV Reference Designs are supported by MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to help designers minimise development time, as well as MPLAB Harmony v3 and MPLAB Code Configurator.