Cell Balancing for the Transportation Sector: Techniques, Challenges, and Future Research Directions

TL;DR

This paper reviews cell balancing techniques for batteries in transportation, highlighting current methods, challenges, and future research directions to improve battery safety, lifespan, and efficiency in electric vehicles.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of passive and active cell balancing methods, identifies research gaps, and suggests future directions for enhancing battery management systems.

Findings

Passive balancing techniques have specific advantages and limitations.

Active balancing methods offer different benefits and challenges.

Future research should address identified gaps and improve cell balancing efficiency.

Abstract

Efficient and reliable energy systems are key to progress of society. High performance batteries are essential for widely used technologies like Electric Vehicles (EVs) and portable electronics. Additionally, an effective Battery Management System (BMS) is crucial to oversee vital parameters of battery. However, BMS can experience cell imbalance due to charging/discharging dynamics, which reduce battery capacity, lifespan, and efficiency, and raise critical safety concerns. This calls for effective cell-balancing techniques. Notably, the existing literature on cell balancing is limited, urgently necessitating a thorough survey to pinpoint key research gaps and suggest prompt solutions. In this article, cell balancing and corresponding techniques are reviewed. Initially, we detail comparison of passive cell balancing techniques and assess their respective advantages, drawbacks, and practical applications. Then, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of active cell balancing methods and applicability of cell balancing for both, series and parallel-connected cells. Additionally, we examine the need for cell balancing in commonly used batteries, and applications in EVs. Lastly, we present detailed prospects which include challenges and directions for future research.