Transparent and Interpretable State of Health Forecasting of Lithium-Ion Batteries with Deep Learning and Saliency Maps

Batteries are the most expensive component of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), but they degrade over time and battery operation. State of health (SOH) forecasting models learn how battery operation over long-time periods of weeks or months influences battery aging. Currently, existing methods for SOH forecasting of lithium-ion batteries based on deep neural network (DNN) models lack explainability of their forecasts due to their inherent black box character. However, the explainability of forecasts is essential to build user trust into the forecasting models. In this work, we address this problem from two perspectives: First, we compared four machine learning (ML) models like decision tree and random forest, which are inherently transparent, to two new DNN architectures with a more inherent black box character. Second, we proposed a new method using Gaussian-filtered saliency maps to visualize battery operational states that are relevant to DNN models. This method is applied to the best DNN models previously trained. We used an extensive data corpus consisting of five public data sets with different operational conditions, battery types, and aging trajectories. Furthermore, we show that the Gaussian-filtered saliency maps meaningfully visualize battery operational states that are consistent with findings from controlled laboratory aging experiments. Thus, this work was able to add transparency and interpretability to the SOH forecasting results of two state-of-the-art DNNs, while maintaining their superior performance compared to transparent ML models, while mitigating their inherent black box character.

Automated summary

This paper compares different machine learning models and deep neural network models, and proposes a new method for visualizing battery operational states. The method is shown to be effective in adding transparency and interpretability to the forecasting results while maintaining superior performance.