Modular system-level architecture for concurrent cell balancing

This paper proposes a novel modular architecture for Electrical Energy Storages (EESs), consisting of multiple series-connected cells. In contrast to state-of-the-art architectures, the presented approach significantly improves the energy utilization, safety, and availability of EESs. For this purpose, each cell is equipped with a circuit that enables an individual control within a homogeneous architecture. One major advantage of our approach is a direct and concurrent charge transfer between each cell of the EES using inductors. To enable a system-level modeling and performance analysis of the architecture, a detailed investigation of the components and their interaction with the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) control was performed at transistor-level. At system-level, we propose a control algorithm for the charge transfer that aims at minimizing the energy loss and balancing time. The results give evidence of the significant advantages of our architecture over existing passive and active balancing methods in terms of energy efficiency and charge equalization time.