An automatic switched-capacitor cell balancing circuit for series-connected battery strings

Abstract

In this paper, a novel voltage equalizer is developed for series battery strings based on the two-phase switched capacitor technique. Different from the conventional voltage equalizers which are developed by switched-mode power converters, bulky magnetic components and complex monitoring and control system are avoided in the proposed system. Just a pair of complementary pulse signals with constant switching frequency and fixed duty ratio are required to control all of switches employed in the proposed voltage equalizer, and charge transfers from the higher voltage battery cells to lower voltage ones automatically. The circuit configuration and operation principle are provided in this paper. The model of the proposed voltage equalizer is also derived. Comparison with other works indicates that the proposed method is superior to the conventional switched-capacitor (SC) voltage equalizer for the high stack of series battery strings. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed voltage equalization system is capable of excellent voltage balancing performance with a simple control method.