Design and Implementation of a Test Bench for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Battery cycler or battery cyclic testers are well-known devices available in the market for the study of the behavior of battery energy storage devices. In this work, an open-source battery-cycler design is proposed. The proposed design considers the generic addition of an arbitrary number of battery cells in series and in parallel to form the battery pack. In particular, it is especially conceived for evaluating the different behavior among individual cells. This feature is mainly considered to help, for instance, in the design of battery management systems with active equalizers. The system is implemented in the Electric Power and Energy Laboratory at the Universidad Austral de Chile. Experimental results show the versatility of the system. This versatility lies not only in its ability to cycle multiple cells simultaneously, but also in its ability to accurately and simultaneously monitor critical parameters such as temperature, voltage and current.