The BMS (Battery Management System) is an electronic device that guarantees the health of the cells of a battery, checking the main parameters and optimizing its performance. This system simplifies the management of the rechargeable battery by monitoring its operating area, balancing it and calculating the state of charge (SoC) and the state of health (SoH) of the battery.
THE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE BMS ARE:
- Monitoring the charge / discharge of the cells of a battery.
- Control and regulation of the battery pack temperature.
- Sending information to other devices in real time.
For electric vehicles, the BMS is a main tool for monitoring recovery energy. This device helps the battery to obtain maximum recovery energy and acts as a bridge between the battery pack and the ECU of the EV.
The BMS for electric vehicles also has the important function of controlling the overall temperature of the battery pack.
In the field of renewable energy, battery monitoring systems are increasingly fundamental, indeed the demand for effective management of the electricity grid and energy storage systems is constantly growing.
THE INTEGRATION BETWEEN BMS AND BALANCING
The cells that compose a lithium battery have a different capacity, resistance and self-discharge.
Our BMS has the task of keeping the cells perfectly balanced with each other. There are different ways to balance the cells of a battery: the traditional system consists in applying a resistance on the cells with a higher charge to “lower” them to the level of the others. This method is very simple and cheap but extremely slow (from 4 to 8 hours for balancing) and inefficient (excess energy is dissipated into heat).
For this reason, in Archimede batteries we have integrated the active balancing system (where possible). This method allows you to redistribute excess energy inside the cells at any time.
A NEW ARCHIMEDE BMS
To meet the increasingly specific needs related to monitoring systems, we are developing a new BMS for the Archimede lithium batteries. The new BMS has the following characteristics:
- Continuous reading of the voltage of all the cells of the battery pack and their balancing according to the parameters set to increase efficiency and duration.
- Continuous reading of the temperatures inside the battery pack, with the possibility of acquiring data from 90 sensors positioned inside the module.
- Checks warning limits and safety limits on the voltages of each cell and on the relative temperatures.
