Highly Effective Cell Equalization in a Lithium-Ion Battery Management System

This paper proposes a highly effective voltage cell equalization method for lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery management systems (BMSs) for several applications, such as nearly zero energy buildings, microgrids, and electric vehicles. The concept of the suggested method is the proper control of the charging current of each cell of a battery stack through the suitable regulation of the gate source of each cell's parallel-connected mosfet. Thus, the mosfet can act as a controllable current source for providing the proper equalization current according to the specific needs of each battery cell. The correct voltage level of the gate-source of each mosfet is determined by a cell equalization controller through the comparison of the performance of each cell of a battery stack with the healthier cell, which is detected by an aging estimation algorithm based on the evaluation of the internal resistor and the capacity fade of each cell. Therefore, smoother and faster cell equalization is achieved compared to the conventional dissipative method. The practicality and the high effectiveness of the proposed cell equalization technique have been experimentally validated. Several experimental results are presented to demonstrate the operational improvements of the proposed cell equalization technique against the conventional one.