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conditions, namely over or undervoltage limits. To cope with These Lithium cells have nominal voltage of 3.2V,
this, electronic system must be used to exercise tight control maximum charge voltage of 3.65V and cut off discharge
on voltage and cell temperature. voltage of 2.0V. They can be charged to 5C and the maximum
discharge current is 10C. They present very good cycle life of
TABLE I
2000 cycles with discharge rate of 1C and 80% depth of
Battery Types Available for Electric Vehicles [6] discharge (DOD). The energy density is 105Wh/kg and power
density 850 W/kg.
Property (Unit) Lead Acid NiMH Lithium
CAN
Master
SBC2680
node
CAN
CAN Bus (battery bank)
CAN CAN
Equal. Equal.
SBC2680 SBC2680
Fig. 2. Cylindrical LiFePo4 Cells from Headway Board Board
. . .
CS
12V Module - 1 12V Module - N
medium to high information data rate (up to 1Mbit/s); individual cells in a battery pack will show different
robust error detection and automatic retransmission of voltage levels after a full charge.
corrupted messages; The management system must guarantee that individual
distinction between transient and permanent errors; cells never pass a maximum value and do not go lower than
asynchronous medium access with priority arbitration; minimum voltage. In the charging process, if any cell reaches
low cost. the maximum value, the process must be stopped and one or
more cells in the pack are not fully charged. The obvious
The CAN protocol is, however, rather simple, which is an consequence is that the battery pack full capacity is not
advantage but also a limitation. Therefore, there are several available for discharge (see Fig. 7). In the discharging process,
higher layer protocols developed to work on top of CAN and the available capacity cannot be fully used because the output
provide extra features as needed. One such protocol, which of battery must be cut if any of the cells reaches minimum
was selected for use in our bank, is FTT-CAN (which stands capacity (first cell in Fig. 7.b). Even worse, with charge-
for Flexible Time Triggered communication over CAN [9]. discharge cycles cell capacities start to drift, leading to a
decrease in the battery available capacity [11].
III. SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER AND BATTERIES
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
The Single Board Computer - SBC2680 - is based in a
Microchip PIC18F2680 microcontroller [10]. This
microcontroller has very appealing characteristics to be used in
the 12V Battery Module, namely: a) b)
clock speed of 40 MHz; Fig. 7. Example of charge level imbalance in the four cells of the battery
pack: a) during charge; b) during discharge
internal memory of 64 kbytes;
24 digital I/O, that can be configured as input or To cope with the above stated problem the battery pack
outputs; needs to be balanced. So, to avoid damaging the cells due
10 bit ADC, with 10 multiplexed inputs; to imbalance in the battery pack, cell equalization is used
integrated CAN controller; to reduce the difference in voltage between the cells. This
serial UART; gives cells longer lifetime and more available capacity [11]
SPI communication; [12].
low cost. The algorithm used in the charge process and to do cell
The SBC2680 construction is modular, allowing easy equalization was the following:
replication and adaptation to all subsystems, resulting in a
homogeneous network with simplified deployment and Charge and Equalization algorithm for 12V Module
management. Do 20 times per second, for each cell (i=0 to 3)
1. Measure cell voltage
2. if voltage(Cell[i]) > THRESH_HIGH then bypass
Cell[i] (turn ON parallel MOSFET[i])
3. if voltage (Cell[i]) > THRESH_OVER then send
ALARM message, in order to cutt-off charger.
Do each second
1. Measure all individual cell temperature
2. if temperature(Cell[i]) > THRESHOLD_TEMP
then send ALARM message (in order to cutt-off
charger).
IV. IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTS The Master SBC is also responsible for the State of Charge
In order to test the battery module, the algorithms to (SOC) estimation. In the first prototype of the battery bank, the
determine the SOC and to equalize individual cells, batteries SOC estimation was done using one of the various techniques
from A123 were used, depicted in Fig. 3. These cells are a used in the literature, as for instance in [12]. We used
scale down of the intended cells allowing carrying out the first Coulomb counting plus heuristics with satisfactory results.
tests with the proposed system.
3,5
1C
Fig. 11. Experimental setup
3
[6] Axeon. Inc, (2011, April 22). Electronic Publication: Our Guide [11] J. Xu et al, Estimation of SOC for Lithium-ion Battery Pack in Electric
Batteries. [Online]. Available: www.axeon.com Vehicle, Int. Conf. Artificial Intelligence and Computational
[7] W. Jiayuan, S.Zechang and W. Xuezhe, Performance and characteristic Intelligence, Shanghai, China, November 07.
research in LiFePO4 battery for electric vehicle applications, IEEE [12] J. Cao, N. Schofield and A. Emadi, Battery Balancing Methods: A
Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference, September 2009. Comprehensive Review, IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion
[8] P. Pereirinha, J. Trovo, L. Marques, J. Silvestre, F. Santos, A. Campos, Conference (VPPC), September 2008, China.
M. Silva and P. Tavares, The Electric Vehicle VEIL Project: A Modular [13] K. Cheng, B. Divakar. H. Wu, K.Ding and H. Ho, Battery
Platform for Research and Education, EET-2007 European EleDrive Management System (BMS) and SOC Development for Electrical
Conference, May June, Brussels, Belgium, 2007. Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 60, No. 1,
[9] L. Almeida, P. Pedreiras, J.A. Fonseca, The FTT-CAN protocol: Why January 2011.
and how, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 49 (6), 2002. [14] J. Cao and A. Emadi, Batteries Need Electronics, IEEE Industrial
[10] Microchip Technology Inc, Electronic Publication: Electronics Magazine, March 2011.
PIC18F2585/2680/4585/4680 Data Sheet [Online]. Available: [15] R. Lu, C. Zhu, L. Tian and Q. Wang, Super-Capacitor Stacks
www.microchip.com Management System With Dynamic Equalization Techniques, IEEE
Transactions on Magnetics, Vol. 43, No. 1, January 2007.