A Modularized Charge Equalizer Using a Battery Monitoring IC for Series-Connected Li-Ion Battery Strings in Electric Vehicles

In the lithium-ion battery systems for electric vehicles (EVs), a battery management system (BMS) is essential for enhancing the battery's life cycle and safety. As a result, a BMS is required to realize both the effective cell monitoring and balancing. Moreover, individual cell balancing and monitoring circuit with a smaller size are required in a large number of battery cells. To meet these requirements, a modularized charge equalizer using the monitoring integrated circuit (IC) is proposed for EV battery strings. The proposed scheme exhibits efficient charge equalization with simple control of the monitoring IC. In the proposed equalizer, the battery string is modularized into a master module and multiple slave modules. A central equalization converter in the master module is shared by all of the battery cells through the module and cell switches in the slave module, instead of a dedicated charge equalizer for each of the cells. Individual charge equalization can be controlled by the cell monitoring IC in the slave module. With this configuration, the battery monitoring and balancing can be effectively merged into one controller. Moreover, the individual charge equalizer can be effectively implemented without affecting the size or cost based on the numbers of cells. In this paper, a prototype for 88 lithium-ion battery cells is optimally designed and implemented. Experimental results verify that the proposed method exhibits outstanding balancing performance with simple operation methods.