Cost Effective Programmable Battery Management System Review, Design and Implementation

Battery management systems (BMS) are crucial for ensuring the safe and efficient operation of energy storage systems, this paper unveils the design of BMS for formula student electric vehicles’ (FSEV) battery pack. The prototype proposed in this article has implemented LTC6803 IC as analog front end (AFE) device. A development board is designed in Autodesk EAGLE, along with a user interface synchronized with LabVIEW GUI to modulate the power modes and operate BMS in low power mode as and when required. Cell data is obtained with 98.02% accuracy during hybrid pulse power characterization (HPPC) test conducted on programmable electric load (PEL) within 14ms through a 1 MHz serial interface. A simple novel weak cell fault detection algorithm is proposed to detect cells with depleting capacity. DC resistance of individual cell is evaluated dynamically. The cell potential equalization with 94.50% accuracy of balancing the cells is considered with de-bounce band. The BMS is tested on FSEV with LiCoO2 battery pack to control the accumulator isolation relays (AIR) and air cooling system along with vehicle control unit. This work focuses on modifying the bill of material of the product by adopting simpler solutions considering design trade-off and offering a cost effective programmable BMS solution.