Design of Parallel Resonant Switched-Capacitor Equalizer for Series-Connected Battery Strings

The traditional pure switched-capacitor equalizer suffers from a large inrush current and low balance speed. An automatic parallel resonant switched-capacitor equalizer (PReSCE) for series-connected battery strings is proposed, which utilizes resonant switched-capacitor to eliminate the inrush current. The parallel ReSC converters not only minimizes output impedance at the low switching frequency, but delivers the excess energy to the low-voltage battery directly from the high-voltage battery in one cycle. Both of the two functions increase the balance speed. All of the switches are controlled by a pair of complementary pulsewidth modulation signals at a fixed operational frequency. Both simulation and experiment are used to verify the theoretical analysis and system feasibility of the proposed circuit. The results show that the PReSCE circuit eliminates the inrush current and increases the balance speed three times than the parallel pure switched-capacitor equalizer.

Automated summary

An automatic parallel resonant switched-capacitor equalizer is proposed to eliminate inrush current and increase balance speed by utilizing resonant switched-capacitors and parallel ReSC converters. The circuit controls all switches with a pair of complementary pulsewidth modulation signals at a fixed operational frequency. Simulation and experiments confirm the feasibility of the circuit, showing three times faster balance speed compared to traditional equalizers.