A critical look at coulomb counting approach for state of charge estimation in batteries

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2-2021

Publication Title

Energies

Volume

14

Issue

14

Keywords

Battery capacity, Battery impedance, Battery management system, Coulomb counting, Equivalent circuit model, Measurement errors, State of charge

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of state-of-charge estimation for rechargeable batteries. Coulomb counting is a well-known method for estimating the state of charge, and it is regarded as accurate as long as the battery capacity and the beginning state of charge are known. The Coulomb counting approach, on the other hand, is prone to inaccuracies from a variety of sources, and the magnitude of these errors has not been explored in the literature. We formally construct and quantify the state-of-charge estimate error during Coulomb counting due to four types of error sources: (1) current measurement error, (2) current integration approximation error, (3) battery capacity uncertainty, and (4) timing oscillator error/drift. It is demonstrated that the state-of-charge error produced can be either time-cumulative or state-of-charge-proportional. Time-cumulative errors accumulate over time and have the potential to render the state-of-charge estimation utterly invalid in the long term.The proportional errors of the state of charge rise with the accumulated state of charge and reach their worst value within one charge/discharge cycle. The study presents methods for reducing time-cumulative and state-of-charge-proportional mistakes through simulation analysis.

DOI

10.3390/en14144074

E-ISSN

19961073

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS