A battery cell balancing control scheme with minimum charge transfer

According to the analysis of the imbalance in series-connected lithium-ion batteries, the state-of-health (SOH) and the energy utilization is mainly influenced when the cells are fully charged or discharged. Therefore, balancing is not necessarily required all the time. In addition, the energy loss of the balancing system is closely related to the charge transfer among different cells. This paper proposes an active balancing control scheme that utilizes the required charge of each cell as the balancing reference. With the scheme, the charge transfer during the balancing process can be minimized so that the energy loss can be reduced and the balance can be achieved when the cells are fully charged or discharged, which not only improves the battery lifetime but also increases the available energy. The proposed control is applied in a balancing system based on the direct cell-to-cell architecture and bi-directional buck/boost converter. Experimental results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed control.