Hardware implementation of battery management system

Abstract

With the rapid increase in the use of renewable energy source due to the depletion of natural resources, there is a need for energy storage systems such as sealed lead acid battery to be used to store up energy. Such energy storage system is required as the amount of energy able to be harness from the renewable energy varies from time to time. The rechargeable battery could be costly and due to its irregular discharging characteristics when connected in series. Over-charging and over-discharging of batteries may result in shortening the lifespan of it. When the batteries are connected in an array, the extraction of accurate state of charge (SOC) which consist of voltage, current and temperature can be a difficult task. It is important to know the parameters such as voltage and current prior to any estimation made, thus a reliable prototype of the battery management system (BMS) is to be built at the end of the final year project. The author is to study the working principle of the different sensor boards and design the board to cater to the prototype of the BMS system. The proposed idea of the sensor boards and cell equalization capability proposed in the prototype with detailed discussion is included in this report. Experiments are carried out to test the sensor boards and solution to the problems encountered during the experiments will also be discussed in this report.