Analysis and estimation of the maximum circulating current during the parallel operation of reconfigurable battery systems

Paper in proceeding, 2020

Reconfigurable battery systems (RBSs) are emerging as a promising solution to safe, efficient, and robust energy storage and delivery through dynamically adjusting the battery connection topology. When the system connection is switched from series to parallel, circulating currents between parallel battery cells/modules can be triggered due to their voltage imbalance. During the hardware design of an RBS, the current rating of associated components, such as batteries, switches, and wires, depends on the maximum circulating currents. Moreover, given a developed RBS, the maximum circulating current also determines whether it is feasible to perform the relevant system reconfiguration. Thus, this paper is focused on modeling and analyzing the current distribution during the series-to-parallel battery reconfiguration and estimating the maximum circulating currents as well as their upper bound under various system states and operating scenarios. A prototype is set up to experimentally verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for estimating the maximum circulating currents.