Modelling Electric Transients in a Conductive Electric Road System

Electric Road Systems, that allow electric vehicles to charge while driving, are emerging as an alternative to static charging stations for electric vehicles. In order to ensure safe and reliable operation of future electric road deployments more knowledge and understanding is needed as to how electric transients occur and affect the electric road system and corresponding charging vehicle. This paper presents a simulation model of a conductive electric road that has been experimentally validated against an existing demonstrator. The model is able to simulate electric transients in the time resolution of 0.1 ms, suitable for the examination of both electric safety issues as well as fault conditions. In order to validate the model, two different operation cases are presented: 1) Normal operation: when an electric bus is driving and charging on the electric road, and 2) Touch event: a human equivalent impedance model is connected to the electric bus chassis to investigate the risk associated with touch currents. The validation results show that the model is able to replicate the electrical transient behaviour that occurs in the electric road for both operation cases.