Extending Battery System Operation via Adaptive Reconfiguration

Abstract

Large-scale battery packs are commonly used in applications such as electric vehicles (EVs) and smart grids. Traditionally, to provide stable voltage to the loads, voltage regulators are used to convert battery packs’ output voltage to those of the loads’ required levels, causing power loss especially when the difference between the supplied and required voltages is large or when the load is light. In this article, we address this issue via a reconfiguration framework for the battery system. By abstracting the battery system as a cell graph, we develop an adaptive reconfiguration algorithm to identify the desired system configurations based on real-time load requirements. Our design is evaluated via both prototype-based experiments, EV driving trace-based emulations, and large-scale simulations. The results demonstrate an extended system operation time of up to 5×, especially when facing severe cell imbalance.