Double-String Battery System with Reconfigurable Cell Topology Operated as a Fast Charging Station for Electric Vehicles

Jan Engelhardt, Jan Martin Zepter, Tatiana Gabderakhmanova, Gunnar Rohde, Mattia Marinelli*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

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    Abstract

    This paper introduces a novel design of an electric vehicle (EV) fast charging station, consisting of a battery energy storage system (BESS) with reconfigurable cell topology. The BESS comprises two battery strings that decouple the power flow between EV and grid, to enable charging powers above the grid capacity. The reconfigurable design is achieved by equipping the battery cells with semiconductor switches and serves two main purposes. First, it aims at solving cell unbalance issues to increase safety, reliability, and lifetime of the battery. Second, it enables the BESS to actively control the EV charging process by changing its cell configuration in a real-time fashion, making a DC-DC converter redundant. The paper presents a modelling approach that captures the reconfigurable design including the controlling algorithm used for cell engagement. The simulation results show that the BESS is able to fulfil the EV request with sufficient accuracy for most of the fast charging process. However, the switching of cells leads to variations in the charging current that can potentially exceed the tolerance band defined in IEC61851-23. Therefore, complementary measures are suggested to achieve a suitable current control during all phases of the charging process. The estimated BESS efficiency during the EV fast charging process is 93.3 %. The losses caused by the reconfigurable design amount to 1.2 % of the provided energy. It is demonstrated that the proposed design has a competitive efficiency compared to a battery buffered fast charging station with DC-DC converter.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number2414
    JournalEnergies
    Volume14
    Issue number9
    Number of pages19
    ISSN1996-1073
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2021

    Keywords

    • Adaptive cell switching
    • Battery balancing
    • Battery management system
    • Battery energy storage system
    • Dc-dc converter
    • Electric vehicle
    • Energy efficiency
    • Fast charging
    • Reconfigurable battery

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