Design of a Charge Equalizer Based on Battery Modularization

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.