• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.279-285
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• 2019

This study proposes an enhanced switching pattern that can improve energy transfer efficiency in an active cell-balancing circuit using a multiwinding transformer. This balancing circuit performs cell balancing by transferring energy stored in a specific cell with high energy to another cell containing low energy through a multiwinding transformer. The circuit operates in flyback and buck-boost modes in accordance with the energy transfer path. In the conventional flyback mode, the leakage inductance of the transformer and the stray inductance component of winding can transfer energy to an undesired path during the balancing operation. This case results in cell imbalance during the cell-balancing process, which reduces the energy transfer efficiency. An enhanced switching pattern that can effectively perform cell balancing by minimizing the amount of energy transferred to the nontarget cells due to the leakage inductance components in the flyback mode is proposed. Energy transfer efficiency and balancing speed can be significantly improved using the proposed switching pattern compared with that using the conventional switching pattern. The performance improvements are verified by experiments using a 1 W prototype cell-balancing circuit.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.247-255
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• 2018

This paper proposes a transformer design of a direct cell-to-cell active cell balancing circuit with a multi-winding transformer for battery management system (BMS) applications. The coupling coefficient of the multi-winding transformer and the output capacitance of MOSFETs significantly affect the balancing current transfer efficiency of the cell balancing operation. During the operation, the multi-winding transformer stores the energy charged in a specific source cell and subsequently transfers this energy to the target cell. However, the leakage inductance of the multi-winding transformer and the output capacitance of the MOSFET induce an abnormal energy transfer to the non-target cells, thereby degrading the transfer efficiency of the balancing current in each cell balancing operation. The impacts of the balancing current transfer efficiency deterioration are analyzed and a transformer design methodology that considers the coupling coefficient is proposed to enhance the transfer efficiency of the balancing current. The efficiency improvements resulting from the selection of an appropriate coupling coefficient are verified by conducting a simulation and experiment with a 1 W prototype cell balancing circuit.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.160-166
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• 2015

This study proposes an improved cell balancing circuit for fast equalization among lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. A simple voltage sensorless charge balancing circuit has been proposed in the past. This cell balancing circuit automatically transfers energy from high-to low-voltage battery cells. However, the circuit requires a switch with low on-resistance because the balancing speed is limited by the on-resistance of the switch. Balancing speed decreases as the voltage difference among the battery cells decrease. In this study, the balancing speed of the cell balancing circuit is enhanced by using the auxiliary circuit, which boosts the balancing current. The charging current is determined by the nominal battery cell voltage and thus, the balancing speed is almost constant despite the very small voltage differences among the batteries. Simulation results are provided to verify the validity of the proposed cell balancing circuit.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.66 no.5
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• pp.786-791
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• 2017

In this paper, the run time of Li-polymer secondary cell with and without Active Balancing BMS is analyzed. The Active Balancing System using Flyback Converter with two-way power control facility, his designed for optimal characteristics of balancing. The run time of Li-polymer secondary cell is drastically increased employing the Flyback Convert Active Balancing BMS. The run time performance of Li-polymer secondary cell with or without Flyback Converter Active Balancing BMS is analyzed with the discharging and charging experiment of Li-polymer secondary cell.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.1812-1820
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• 2017

This paper analyzes a symmetric active cell balancer for a battery management system. The considered cell balancer uses a forward converter in which the circuit structure is symmetric. This cell-balancing method uses fewer switches and is simpler than the previously proposed active cell-balancing circuits. Active power switches of this cell-balancing circuit operate simultaneously with the same pulse width modulation signals. Therefore, this cell-balancing circuit requires less time to be balanced than a previous bidirectional-forward-converter-based cell balancer. This paper analyzes the operational principles and modes of this cell balancer with computer-based circuit simulation results as well as experimental results in which each unbalanced cell is equalized with this cell balancer. The maximum power transfer efficiency of the investigated cell balancer was 87.5% from the experimental results. In addition to the experimental and analytical results, this paper presents the performance of this symmetric active cell-balancing method.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.199-208
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• 2017

Lithium polymer batteries are used in energy storage systems (ESS), electric vehicles (EVs), etc. due to their high safety, fast charging and long lifecycle, and now they are used in agricultural drones. However, when overcharging and overdischarging, the lithium-polymer battery is destroyed in the gap structure in the lithium-ion battery and the battery life is reduced. In order to prevent overcharge and overdischarge, uneven cell voltage Cell balancing system is needed. In this paper, a fuzzy controller suitable for nonlinear systems is proposed by detecting the unbalanced cells by detecting the voltage difference between charging and discharging of each cell, and suggesting the applied cell balancing algorithm. In this paper, we have designed the cell balancing of the battery pack of agricultural drones by fuzzy control and it is designed for equal control between cells. As a final result, we checked whether cell balancing is good, and when there are two cells, Cell balancing was confirmed. We tested whether it could be used for other products. As a result, we confirmed that cell balancing is good regardless of the number of cells used.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.3394-3408
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• 2014

Conventional mobile state (MS) and base station (BS) association based on average signal strength often results in imbalance of cell load which may require more powerful processor at BSs and degrades the perceived transmission rate of MSs. To deal with this problem, a Markov decision process (MDP) for load balancing in a multi-cell system with multi-carriers is formulated. To solve the problem, exploiting Sarsa algorithm of on-line learning type [12], ${\alpha}$-controllable load balancing algorithm is proposed. It is designed to control tradeoff between the cell load deviation of BSs and the perceived transmission rates of MSs. We also propose an ${\varepsilon}$-differential soft greedy policy for on-line learning which is proven to be asymptotically convergent to the optimal greedy policy under some condition. Simulation results verify that the ${\alpha}$-controllable load balancing algorithm controls the behavior of the algorithm depending on the choice of ${\alpha}$. It is shown to be very efficient in balancing cell loads of BSs with low ${\alpha}$.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2015.11a
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• pp.7-8
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• 2015

In this paper a cell-to-cell fast charge balancing circuit for the Lithium-Ion battery module is proposed. In the proposed topology the energy in a high voltage cell is transferred directly to a low voltage cell through the operation of the dc-dc converter. Furthermore, the charge balancing can be performed regardless of the battery operation whether it is being charged, discharged or relaxed. The monitoring circuit composed of a DSP and a battery monitoring IC is designed to monitor the cell voltage and detect the inferior cell thereby protecting the battery module from failure. In order to demonstrate the performance of the proposed topology, a prototype circuit was designed and applied to 12 Lithium-Ion battery module. It has been verified with the experiments that the charge equalization time of the proposed method was shorter compared with those of other methods.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.367-376
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• 2016

This paper presents a cell balancing method for a single switch flyback converter with a multi-winding transformer. The conventional method using a flyback converter with a multi-winding transformer is simple and easy to control, but the voltage of each secondary winding coil might be non-uniform because of the unequal effective turn-ratio. In particular, it is difficult to control the non-uniform effect using turn-ratios because secondary coil has a limited number of turns. The non-uniform secondary voltages disturb the cell balancing procedure and induce an unbalance in cell voltages. Individual cell control by adding a switch for each cell can reduce the undesirable effect. However, the circuit becomes bulky, resulting in additional loss. The proposed method here uses the conventional flyback converter with an adjustment made to the output filters of the cells, instead of the additional switch. The magnitude of voltage applied to a particular cell can be reduced or increased according to the adjusted filter and the selected switching frequency. An analysis of the conventional converter configuration and the filter design method reveals the possibility of adequate cell balancing control without any additional switch on the secondary side.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.219-226
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• 2020

Given the change in the energy market, large energy storage systems (ESS) is rapidly entering the market. In this rapid spread, fire accidents are becoming an issue. This study attempts to approach the fire from the system point of view to analyze the problems caused by bonding from different perspectives. Moreover, to conduct this study, the fabrication of real objects is dangerous, which needs to be verified through simulation. In this study, we approach the cause of fire that occurs in large-capacity ESS from the system perspective. We focus on determining the effects of cell balancing performed on the BMS after charging. Thus, we analyze the cell balancing behavior and the linkage risks to the various stacks. The study also explores why no fire occurs during 70% operation.