Cell-balancing Algorithm for Paralleled Battery Cells using State-of-Charge Comparison Rule

The inconsistencies between paralleled battery cells are becoming more considerable issue in high capacity battery applications like electric vehicles. Due to differences in state-of-charge (SOC) and internal resistance within individual cells in parallel, charging or discharging current is not appropriately balanced to each cell in terms of SOC, which may shorten the lifetime or sometimes cause safety issues. In this paper, an intelligent cell-balancing algorithm is proposed to overcome the inconsistency issue especially for paralleled battery cells. In this scheme, SOC information collected in the sub-BMS module is sent to the main-BMS module, where the number of parallel cells to be connected to DC bus is continuously updated based on the suggested SOC comparison rule. To verify the method, operation of the algorithm on 4 paralleled battery cells are simulated on Matlab/Simulink. The simulation result shows that the SOCs of paralleled cells are evenly redistributed. It is expected that the proposed algorithm provides high reliable and prolong the life cycle and working capacity of the battery pack.