Experimental Evaluation of Cell Balancing Algorithms with Arduino Based Monitoring System

The trend toward more electric vehicles has demanded the need for high efficiency, high voltage and long life battery systems [1,_2]. Also renewable energy systems carry huge battery backups to overcome the renewable source shortage. Battery systems are affected by many factors, cells unbalancing is one of most important among these factors. Without the balancing system, individual cell voltages will differ over time that will decrease the battery pack capacity quickly. This condition is especially severe when the battery has a long string of cells and frequent regenerative charging is done via battery pack. Cell balancing is a method of designing safer battery solutions that extends battery runtime as well as battery life. Balancing mechanism can help in equalizing the state of charge across the multiple cells, therefore increasing the performance of battery system. Different cell balancing methodologies have been proposed for battery pack in recent years. These methods have some merits and demerits in comparison to each other; e.g. balancing time, complexity and active or passive balancing etc. In this paper, current bypass active cell balancing and Arduino based monitoring system designing and implementation is carried out. In charging process, this balancing technique provides partial current bypass using charging slope for weak cells. Also the passive shunt resistor technique is implemented to compare and verify the proposed system efficient response. Output result shows that this proposed balancing technique can perform cell balancing in much effective and efficient way as compared to previous balancing techniques. Using this cell balancing technique, we can improve overall battery health and lifetime.