Non-equal voltage cell balancing for battery and super-capacitor source package management system using tapped inductor techniques

Abstract

The battery management system (BMS) is the key development for energy storage systems, and battery balancing is an important subsystem of the BMS. However, with rapid development of supercapacitors, future energy storage cells are not constrained by one type, while different types of cells may form a source package (SP). Furthermore, the introduction of second-life batteries from retired electric vehicles promotes the demand of effective balancing systems for SPs with hybrid cells, as well as the requirement that balancing should be extended to any preset ratio rather than 1:1. This paper proposes a novel tapped inductor balancing circuit that allows any ratio of voltage balancing for hybrid energy storage cells. The analysis of the circuit, simulation and experiment results are presented to demonstrate its effectiveness in handling hybrid source balancing.