Two-Stage Cell Balancing Scheme for Hybrid Electric Vehicle Lithium-Ion Battery Strings

Two-stage charge equalization scheme for HEV lithium-ion battery string is proposed with the optimal power rating design rule in this paper, where in the first stage the over charged energy of higher voltage cells is drawn out to the single common output capacitor and then, that discharged energy is recovered into the overall battery stack in the second stage. To achieve charge equalization of sort, the conventional flyback DC/DC converters of low power and minimized size are employed. The industrial sample employing both the proposed two-stage cell balancing scheme and the optimal power rating design rule shows good cell balancing performance with reduced size as well as low voltage stresses of the electronic devices.