Model-based Investigation of Vehicle Electrical Energy Storage Systems

Abstract

In the recent years, more and more important research and development projects are aimed to the modernization of vehicle energy supply and to find an alternative of fossil energy sources. One of these alternatives is the family of vehicles powered by purely electric energy. Besides its advantages, the main disadvantage of this solution is that the storage of the necessary amount of electrical energy needed for the long term operation of the vehicles is not completely solved. Therefore there is a rapid development in the field of batteries with small size and high storage capacity. An important prerequisite of development and testing of such batteries is the presence of a model suitable for the comparison of different battery types and describing the underlying physical mechanisms. Models used so far describe only the current-voltage characteristics without taking the various temperature circumstances into account. The charging, discharging, and capacity parameters of batteries used for energy storage are highly temperature dependent, so temperature must be taken into consideration for the correct description of such batteries. The proposed paper presents a general temperature dependent model of a family of batteries developed for vehicle electronic use. Besides the model derivation, the methodology and instruments developed for the correct measurements of the temperature dependent parameters are also presented together with a Matlab/Simulink block for the temperature dependent battery.