A Modularized Two-Stage Charge Equalization Converter for Series Connected Lithium-Ion Battery Strings

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.