LabView-based universal battery monitoring and management system

In this paper, the main principles and the general structure of battery monitoring and management systems (BMS) are explained. Furthermore, a newly developed, highly accurate and inexpensive data acquisition system for BMS is presented. The modular measuring system consists of two different types of monitoring units, a battery block-voltage monitoring unit and a battery current and temperature monitoring unit. Following the discussion of the measuring hardware, a LabView realization of a universal BMS software is described in detail. Due to the flexible design of the LabView BMS, the system is able to perform control and surveillance activities for any kind of battery application and battery technology (e.g. Pb, VRLA, Ni-Cd, Ni-MH etc.). The BMS was originally designed for VRLA batteries in uninterruptible power supply systems (UPS), but was also tested in electric vehicles (VW CityStromer, BMW).