Design of an embedded battery management system with passive balancing

This article documents the results of designing an embedded battery pack for an educational electric kart. The work is based on a previous project where an electric kart drive train was designed. The new lithium ion battery pack design is described and the need for a microcontroller controlled battery balancing system is based. A passive cell balancing solution is implemented as a small cell balancer board. A central control board is designed to collect cell status information, analyze the obtained data and provide information to the end user. The collected information is stored in a memory card for further battery pack performance evaluation. The paper shows an example of obtained charge/discharge data.