Philip McGaw has over a decade of professional electronics experience. EMC experience on top of my experience with general electrical and electronics engineering, Including Power Electronics, both via formal education and personal projects, I believe the knowledge and skills built up during this time make me the perfect candidate for the role, One of my projects is to build an electric go-kart for my two children, this is being designed to be a frame welded from 20 mm square box and MDF sheet, the motors for it are recovered from “Hoverboards”, the control electronics will be bespoke with custom ESCs and BMS with the individual 21700 cells being built into packs.

Other personal projects I have worked on are a remote weather station powered by a small 3D-printed wind turbine and feeding the data back to myself via the LoRa over the ThingsNetwork.

Philip McGaw has held some DC Live working and Lid-off battery permits allowing him to write test plans, and work on EV and BEV electric vehicles and DC buses under a permit-to-work system. He can also make a vehicle safe for others to work on and sign off on work they have undertaken. Philip McGaw also has a working knowledge of BS 7671 and has undergone formal training to be certified for the 17th edition.

While working for CASS he tested a large variety of appliances that were to be attached to both domestic and industrial supplies, both 230 V and 415 V (wiring up and testing mains equipment with both inputs and outputs) as well as some sub-station and DNO equipment (circuit breakers and interrupters) with ratings well more than 400 A at 230 V (single-phase) or 11 kV AC (single-phase and three-phase).

I have an understanding of the EV charging system and have experience testing EVs with Level 2 and 3 chargers (normally via CCS type 2 connectors), I can interpret the command pilot signal to understand what the negotiated maximum current should be and can use this along with instrumentation to read the real-time status of the requested power level.

I have assembled and installed a small number of OpenEVSE for family and friends (final attachment to home distribution board undertaken by a Part P certified electrician).

A work-based solution I delivered was involved with the testing of Traction Inverters for EMC and functional testing, the motors they are designed to drive are 100 kW 400 V brushless motors, meaning at full load they can draw up to 400 A peak, this makes it hard to source the required power. The solution I implemented was to use two traction inverters and two traction motors and couple the motors mechanically together. One motor would be used as an electronic load, and the other would be running in regeneration mode, applying torque, and providing about 80% of the required electrical energy to the first, this meant that the current provided by the external PSUs could be vastly reduced.

I also implemented a standardisation on the Amphenol Industrial PL282 series of connectors for use in testing, this allows test setups to be quicker to set up and modify while ensuring safe isolation and containment for operators from HaV.

I have experience with solar PV from living on a narrowboat for seven years, my partner and I lived on a 57’ long Jonathan Wilson, and our electrical requirements were supplied by a bank of lead-acid batteries, at 12 V, with charging supplied via photovoltaics and an alternator on the propulsion diesel engine.

I am actively working towards professional registration through the IET, intending to become an incorporated engineer.

Philip McGaw’s Recent Posts

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  Reducing Ripple on DC lines
  After AC Rectification, the next step is Reducing the Ripple on the DC supply line as much as possible.
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  Alternating Current Rectification
  AC (Alternating Current) is used for the transmission of mains voltage, one of its main advantages for use as a method of transmission over DC (Direct Current) is that a change of voltage between High Voltage, Low Voltage, and SELV (Safety Extra-low Voltage) can be performed using a transformer. A single-phase transformer is made up of two coils of wire (inductors) on a common core, in general for a given voltage and current, the physical size of the transformer is related to the frequency of the Alternating Current. While you can change the voltage of DC supplies it requires a… Read more: Alternating Current Rectification
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  EV Connectors for BEVs, PHEVs and EVSEs
  For the Charging Two EVs on One EVSE project, I will need a Vehicle Inlet ‘Male’ type EV charging connector for the upstream supply from the existing EVSE. And two EVSE ‘Female’ type EV connectors to allow for connection to the downstream vehicles, Since we are in the UK I am going to use Type 2 connectors. but equally Type 1 or NACS could be used. EV charging connectors supplier In the UK there is a supplier called EV Connectors, whose website sells the EVSE, and Vehicle inlet connectors shown below. These three EV connectors will be mounted into an… Read more: EV Connectors for BEVs, PHEVs and EVSEs
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  Charging Two EVs on One EVSE
  Like an increasing number of people, we have one home EV charger but have two EVs. My 2015 Nissan Leaf has a range of about 60 miles, which is perfect for daily school runs, and trips to the office. However, this means that most nights I need to put it on charge. My Wife’s EV on the other hand is a more modern Nissan Leaf with a range of about 200 miles, which is more than enough for 99% of all day trips out, requiring no charging from public charging networks. While it has a range of over 200 miles,… Read more: Charging Two EVs on One EVSE
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  Minimalist EVSE Charger Circuits
  Following on from my quick overview of Proximity Pilot and Control Pilot, we will need to dig a little deeper into the functionality of CP/PP to talk about how to make some circuits for a minimalist EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment). I would not recommend using this in production as it does not implement any safety features. We will need a power supply to implement both PP and CP and switch the mains supply to get the MVP (Minimum viable product) EVSE Charger. Recently I wrote a post showing how to build an EV Emulator test box to allow you… Read more: Minimalist EVSE Charger Circuits