Modular Battery Emulator for Development and Functional Testing of Battery Management Systems: The Cell Emulator

• Main Authors: Baronti, F. (Author), Di Rienzo, R. (Author), Roncella, R. (Author), Saletti, R. (Author), Verani, A. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2022
• Subjects: battery cell emulator; Battery Management System; BMS characterization; hardware in the loop; open hardware platform
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Battery Management Systems are fundamental components of the present battery genera-tion. The development and characterization phases of a BMS often require an emulator of the battery cells with which the Battery Management System functions can be assessed with no safety risks as it would instead happen using a real battery. This work describes the design and characterization of a modular cell emulator circuit to be used as platform for the Hardware-in-the-loop test of a Battery Management System. The design constraints and choices are first described. Then, the experimental characterization of the cell emulator is shown and discussed. The proposed circuit shows a voltage resolution of 76 µV, an accuracy of 2.17 mV, and a setting time of 340 µs. Its cost is around 40 USD. The circuit results to be a very good trade-off between performance and cost. The Project is available to the scientific community as open hardware platform freely downloadable. It could be useful to small-size laboratories to self-produce a low-cost battery emulator with good performance for the development and the functional test of custom Battery Management Systems. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.