Reducing the Capacity Loss of Lithium-Ion Batteries with Machine Learning in Real-Time—A Study Case

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are the state-of-the-art technology for energy storage systems. LIBs can store energy for longer, with higher density and power capacity than other technologies. Despite that, they are sensitive to abuses and failures. If the battery management system (BMS) operates incorrectly or some anomalies appear, performance and security issues can be observed in LIBs. BMSs are also hard-programmed, have complex circuits, and have low computational resources, which limit the use of prognoses and diagnoses systems operating in real-time and embedded in the vehicle. Therefore, some technologies, such as edge and cloud computing, data-driven approaches, and machine learning (ML) models, can be applied to help the BMS manage the LIBs. Therefore, this work presents an edge–cloud computing system composed of two ML approaches (anomaly detection and failure classification) to identify the abuses in the LIBs in real-time. To validate the work, 36 NMC cells with a nominal capacity of 2200 mAh and voltage of 3.7 V were used to build the experiments segmented into three steps. Firstly, 12 experiments under failures were realized, which resulted in a high capacity loss. Then, the data were used to build both ML models. In the second step, the anomaly approach was applied to 12 cells observing the cells’ temperature anomalies. Then, the combination of IF and RF was applied to another 12 cells. The IF could reduce the capacity loss by about 45% when multiple abuses were applied to the cells. Despite that, this approach could not avoid some failures, such as overdischarging. Conversely, combining IF and RF could significantly reduce the capacity loss by 91% for the multiple abuses. The results concluded that ML could help the BMS identify failures in the first stage and reduce the capacity loss in LIBs.