• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2015.07a
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• pp.401-402
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• 2015

In this paper a direct cell-to-cell charge balancing circuit which can transfer the charge from any cell to any cell in the battery string is introduced. In the proposed topology the energy in the high voltage cell is transferred to the low voltage cell through the simple operation of a dc-dc converter to get fast equalization. Furthermore, the charge equalization can be performed regardless of the battery module operation whether it is being charged, discharged or relaxed. The monitoring circuit composed of a DSP and a battery monitoring IC is designed to monitor the cell voltage and protect the battery. In order to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed topology, a prototype circuit was designed and applied to 12 Lithium-Ion battery module. It has been verified with the experiments that the charge equalization time of the proposed method was shortest compared with those of other methods.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.535-537
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• 2008

This paper proposes a modularized two-stage charge equalization converter for a series-connected lithium-ion battery string. In this paper, the series-connected battery sting is modularized into M modules, and each module has K cells in series. With this modularization, low voltage stress on the electronic devices can be achieved. A two-stage dc-dc converter with cell selection switches is employed. The first stage dc-dc converter steps down the high bus voltage to about 10 V. The second stage dc-dc converter integrated with selection switches equalizes the cell voltages. A prototype for 88 lithium-ion battery cells is optimally designed and implemented. Experimental results verify that the proposed equalization method has good cell balancing performance showing low voltage stress, small size, and low cost.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.256-258
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• 2007

A charge equalization converter with parallel-connected primary windings of transformers is proposed in digest. The proposed work effectively balance the voltage among Lithium-Ion battery cells despite each battery cell has low voltage gap compared with its SOC. The principle of the proposed work is that the equalizing energy from all battery strings moves to the lowest voltage battery through the isolated dc/dc converter controlled by the corresponding bi-directional switch. In this digest, a prototype of four Lithium-Ion battery cells is optimally designed and implemented, and experimental results show that the proposed method has excellent cell balancing performance.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.241-243
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• 2007

Two-stage charge equalization scheme for HEV lithium-ion battery string is proposed with the optimal power rating design rule in this paper, where in the first stage the over charged energy of higher voltage cells is drawn out to the single common output capacitor and then, that discharged energy is recovered into the overall battery stack in the second stage. To achieve charge equalization of sort, the conventional flyback DC/DC converters of low power and minimized size are employed. The industrial sample employing both the proposed two-stage cell balancing scheme and the optimal power rating design rule shows good cell balancing performance with reduced size as well as low voltage stresses of the electronic devices.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.273-279
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• 1998

In this paper, the proposed charging system consists of step charging mode and time-sharing equalization charging mode. As $\Delta$V=O point is detected, the proposed cut-off method will selectively cut off the only battery to reach the $\Delta$V=O point, preventing serial-connected batteries from undercharging. In the start of each step, the equalization charging mode is performed to reduce the capacity difference among the batteries. Though it is added to simple circuit for selective cut-off, comparing with recently used step-charging method, this system can improve the life cycle of battery and charging efficiency, and be also very effective for preventing the batteries from overcharging and undercharging.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.186-196
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• 2013

This paper presents a low voltage-stress AC-linked charge equalizing system for balancing the energy in a serially connected, valve-regulated lead acid battery string using a modular converter that consists of multiple transformers coupled together. Each converter was coupled through an AC-linked bus to increase the overall energy transfer efficiency of the system and to eliminate the problem of the unbalanced charging of batteries. Previous solutions are based on centralized and modularized topologies. A centralized topology requires a redesign of the hardware and related components. It also faces a high voltage stress when the number of batteries is expanded. Modularized solutions use low-voltage-stress, double-stage, DC-linked topologies which leads to poor energy transfer efficiency. The proposed solution uses a low-voltage stress, AC-linked, modularized topology that makes adding more batteries easier. It also has a better energy transfer efficiency. To ensure that the charge equalization system operates smoothly and safely charges batteries, a small intelligent microcontroller was used in the control section. The efficiency of this charge equalization system is 85%, which is 21% better than other low-voltage-stress DC-linked charging techniques. The validity of this approach was confirmed by experimental results.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.413-415
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• 2008

The charge equalizer design for a series connected battery string is very challenging because it needs to satisfy many requirements such as implementation possibility, equalization speed, equalization efficiency, controller complexity, size and cost issues, voltage and current stress, and so on. Numerous algorithms and circuits were developed to meet the above demands and some interesting results have been obtained through them. However, for a large number of cells, for example, eighty or more batteries, the previous approaches might cause problems. Such problems include long equalization time, high controller complexity, bulky size, high implementation cost, and high voltage and current stress. To overcome these circumstances, this paper proposes a charge equalizer design method based on a battery modularization technique. In this method, the number of cells that we consider in an equalizer design procedure can be effectively reduces; thus, designing a charge equalizer becomes much easier. Furthermore, by applying the previously verified charge equalizers to the intramodule and the outer-module, we can obtain easy design of a charge equalizer and good charge balancing performance. Several examples and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the charge equalizer design method.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.160-166
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• 2015

This study proposes an improved cell balancing circuit for fast equalization among lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. A simple voltage sensorless charge balancing circuit has been proposed in the past. This cell balancing circuit automatically transfers energy from high-to low-voltage battery cells. However, the circuit requires a switch with low on-resistance because the balancing speed is limited by the on-resistance of the switch. Balancing speed decreases as the voltage difference among the battery cells decrease. In this study, the balancing speed of the cell balancing circuit is enhanced by using the auxiliary circuit, which boosts the balancing current. The charging current is determined by the nominal battery cell voltage and thus, the balancing speed is almost constant despite the very small voltage differences among the batteries. Simulation results are provided to verify the validity of the proposed cell balancing circuit.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.193-199
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• 2014

The series connected battery cells are mainly used in high voltage battery pack application. However parameter inequality of each battery cell makes battery voltage imbalance problem. In this paper, a new balancing circuit utilizing converter scheme for the series connected battery cells is proposed. Proposed circuit offers easy control and fast equalization time. Moreover the circuit can be used in a practical application because it has high modularity and can operate during the charging/discharging cycle. To show its superiorness and effectiveness, the principle of proposed circuit is explained with computer simulation and experiment is carried out using lithium-ion battery.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.554-559
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• 1998

Equalizing the state of charge of cell that affects the charge/discharge quality and efficiency of the battery through the charge/discharge characteristic experiments of battery source, we develope the high efficiency charge/discharge system which would be used in serial HEV with the constant engine-generator output. For this, establishes the electrical model of Ni-MH battery appropriate to the high efficiency charge/discharge conditions. There is no model of Ni-MH cell, so we used Ni-Cd model and obtain the Ni-MH model through the experiment. A reason that each cell has the same charge/discharge property for applying the cell model to serial/parallel connected battery source extensively is needed. Therefore, in this paper, propose the Ni-MH charger/discharger has the equalization charging function and selectable cut-off function.