A Battery Pack Reconfiguration Scheme for Improved Charge Balancing

Autor: Stephen Yurkovich, Mark Ditsworth
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: ACC
DOI: 10.23919/acc.2018.8431612
Popis: Charge balancing is an important consideration for Lithium-ion battery management systems in protecting cell health and maximizing performance. Many existing balancing systems employ passive balancing during charging cycles by resistive dissipation, or use active balancing with switched-capacitor schemes or DC-DC converters to drive balancing between cells. Methods for active balancing are generally more efficient than those for passive balancing and can be used more frequently, but are more complex and costlier. Through laboratory experimentation, this article investigates an innovative idea for pack reconfiguration to improve cell balancing that has the simplicity of passive balancing with the efficiency characteristic of active balancing schemes. The idea is centered around a grid configuration pack, reconfigured through a simple switching network to a parallel configuration. During periods of charging in the parallel configuration, post-charge results show improvement in terms of pack balance as compared to charging in the full grid configuration. Self-balancing with no measurable energy loss was shown to achieve a small imbalance over the course of a resting period when starting with an imbalanced pack.
Databáze: OpenAIRE