A Novel Modular, Reconfigurable Battery Energy Storage System: Design, Control, and Experimentation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular, reconfigurable battery energy storage system with integrated control and optimization, enabling fault isolation, individual cell management, and improved efficiency through experimental validation.

Contribution

It presents a novel modular design with reconfigurable switches and converters, along with an optimal power management method based on convex optimization for enhanced system performance.

Findings

Successful simulation results demonstrating reduced power losses.

Prototype validation confirming system reconfigurability and control effectiveness.

Effective SoC and temperature balancing across cells.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel modular, reconfigurable battery energy storage system. The proposed design is characterized by a tight integration of reconfigurable power switches and DC/DC converters. This characteristic enables isolation of faulty cells from the system and allows fine power control for individual cells toward optimal system-level performance. An optimal power management approach is developed to extensively exploit the merits of the proposed design. Based on receding-horizon convex optimization, this approach aims to minimize the total power losses in charging/discharging while allocating the power in line with each cell's condition to achieve state-of-charge (SoC) and temperature balancing. By appropriate design, the approach manages to regulate the power of a cell across its full SoC range and guarantees the feasibility of the optimization problem. We perform extensive simulations and further develop a lab-scale prototype to validate the proposed system design and power management approach.