Advances in Li-Ion battery management for electric vehicles

This paper aims at presenting new solutions for advanced Li-Ion battery management to meet the performance, cost and safety requirements of automotive applications. Emphasis is given to monitoring and controlling the battery temperature, a parameter which dramatically affects the performance, lifetime, and safety of Li-Ion batteries. In addition to this, an innovative battery management architecture is introduced to facilitate the development and integration of advanced battery control algorithms. It exploits the concept of smart cells combined with an FPGA-based centralized unit. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is shown through hardware-in-the-loop simulations and experimental results

Modelling polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells for dynamic reliability assessment

Tackling climate change is arguably the biggest challenge humanity faces in the 21st century. Rising average global temperatures threaten to destabilize the fragile ecosystem of the Earth and bring unprecedented changes to human lives if nothing is done to prevent it. This phenomenon is caused by the anthropogenic greenhouse effect due to the increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). One way to avert the disaster is to drastically reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in all spheres of human activities, including transportation. To do this, research and development of electric vehicles (EVs) to make them more efficient, reliable and accessible is essential. [Continues.

LITHIUM-ION BATTERY DEGRADATION EVALUATION THROUGH BAYESIAN NETWORK METHOD FOR RESIDENTIAL ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS

Batteries continue to infiltrate in innovative applications with the technological advancements led by Li-ion chemistry in the past decade. Residential energy storage is one such example, made possible by increasing efficiency and decreasing the cost of solar PV. Residential energy storage, charged by rooftop solar PV is tied to the grid, provides household loads. This multi-operation role has a significant effect on battery degradation. These contributing factors especially solar irradiation and weather conditions are highly variable and can only be explained with probabilistic analysis. However, the effect of such external factors on battery degradation is approached in recent literature with mostly deterministic and some limited stochastic processes. Thus, a probabilistic degradation analysis of Li-ion batteries in residential energy storage is required to evaluate aging and relate to the external causal factors. The literature review revealed modified Arrhenius degradation model for Li-ion battery cells. Though originating from an empirical deterministic method, the modified Arrhenius equation relates battery degradation with all the major properties, i.e. state of charge, C-rate, temperature, and total amp-hour throughput. These battery properties are correlated with external factors while evaluation of capacity fade of residential Li-ion battery using a proposed detailed hierarchical Bayesian Network (BN), a hierarchical probabilistic framework suitable to analyze battery degradation stochastically. The BN is developed considering all the uncertainties of the process including, solar irradiance, grid services, weather conditions, and EV schedule. It also includes hidden intermediate variables such as battery power and power generated by solar PV. Markov Chain Monte-Carlo analysis with Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is used to estimate capacity fade along with several other interesting posterior probability distributions from the BN. Various informative and promising results were obtained from multiple case scenarios that were developed to explore the effect of the aforementioned external factors on the battery. Furthermore, the methodologies involved to perform several characterizations and aging test that is essential to evaluate the estimation proposed by the hierarchical BN is explored. These experiments were conducted with conventional and low-cost hardware-in-the-loop systems that were developed and utilized to quantify the quality of estimation of degradation

Ragone plots revisited: A review of methodology and application across energy storage technologies

The term “Ragone plot” refers to a popular and helpful comparison framework that quantifies the energy–power relationship of an energy storage material, device, or system. While there is consensus on the general Ragone plot concept, many implementations are found in the literature. This article provides a systematic and comprehensive review of the Ragone plot methodology in the field of electric energy storage. A faceted taxonomy is developed, enabling existing and future Ragone plots to be unambiguously classified and contextualized. This review focuses on disseminating the methodology, discussing technology-specific aspects, and giving an overview of the further sizing and design methods developed based on Ragone plots. Additionally, this article identifies best practices for obtaining and presenting Ragone plots. This review is not limited to electrochemical energy storage, where the framework is traditionally applied, but also encompasses all other electric energy storage. Here, the Ragone plot can compactly quantify off-design performance and operational flexibility, independent of technology-specific performance indicators. This review is the first of its kind and can, therefore, guide future application of the Ragone plot framework in a consistent manner