Among the biggest challenges for EV manufacturers are battery cost, size, and weight. Not to mention that pesky little range issue. Advancements in battery technology are critical for the success of EVs, and engineers at the University of California, San Diego are working to help solve that problem by developing algorithms to enable lithium-ion batteries to run more efficiently.
The Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego received a grant from the Department of Energy to develop estimation algorithms to enable batteries to charge faster and run more powerful electric motors. By enabling the batteries to run more efficiently, manufacturers can be more precise in sizing the batteries for vehicles, thus saving weight and cost. In addition, these advanced algorithms enable a battery to be charged faster and more closely monitor its condition.
So, what’s the secret? Professor Miroslav Krstic and Postdoctoral Fellow Scott Moura at UC San Diego are taking a whole different approach to monitoring a battery. Instead of measuring voltage and current, they are developing an approach to estimate a battery’s state of charge at the electrochemical level. To optimize a battery’s efficiency, you need to know where the ions are in the battery. Krstic and Moura are developing algorithms to estimate where the ions are in the battery, which is much more precise than voltage monitoring. Part of their research will be testing the algorithms on EV batteries and comparing their performance against batteries using existing estimation and control algorithms. The end-in-mind is to formulate a strategy to charge and discharge batteries at their maximum potential and do it safely.
Read more about the work being done. http://www.hybridcars.com/news/faster-charging-times-through-new-sophisticated-control-algorithms-53415.html
Very interesting! Makes total sense to better quantify battery capacity throughout the battery lifecycle.