Current developments of Battery Management Systems

The current increase in energy density of lithium-ion battery technology combined with a continuous decrease of the cell and battery system prices have led to the successful introduction of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) to the mass market. Besides the lithium-ion cell, the Battery Management System (BMS) has become a core component of the complete battery system, providing safety, availability and performance. Therefore, hardware as well as software used in BMS for monitoring and control, is undergoing to a rapid development. This paper will give an overview of the current development on the battery management system. Firstly, the functionality and hardware specification focusing on safety related perspective will be presented. Then, battery state estimation algorithms will be described and compared. Finally, implementation strategies of detailed algorithms into real BMS hardware will be discussed.