Estimating Battery Pack SOC Using A Cell-to-Pack Gain Updating Algorithm

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries are becoming the main energy storage in electric vehicles and electric grids. To elevate the battery capacity and the voltage supply, the battery cells are stacked to form a battery pack. The state-of charge (SOC) of the battery pack requires continuous monitoring for the operation safety. The current developed SOC estimation algorithms shows decent estimation accuracy but they are designed for individual cells. These algorithms stay in the battery cell level because they cannot capture the cell-to-cell difference which exists after manufactured. This paper proposed a battery pack SOC Co-Estimation algorithm based on the estimated battery cell SOC. The proposed battery pack SOC Co-Estimation algorithm can accurately estimates the SOC of a battery pack with three serial connected battery cells but without cell balancing. This algorithm also has the potential to reduce the computation effort on the battery management system (BMS) because it does not need to monitor every single cell in the battery pack.