The BMS is a crucial component of the battery system that ensures a safe operation by avoiding hazardous events like overcharge, undercharge, overvoltage, undervoltage, overtemperature, and overcurrent of the battery cells. To achieve these safety functions, the voltage and current of every in series connected cell or cellblock (single cells connected in a parallel circuit) as well as the temperature of cells is permanently measured and monitored by the BMS. Furthermore, passive cell balancing can be enabled which allows a directed discharging of specific cells to ensure a near equal voltage of each cell or cellblock.
Based on the voltage, current and temperature data the BMS software algorithms can estimate the battery states, e.g. state-of-charge (SOC), state-of-health (SOH), state-of-energy (SOE) and state-of-power (SOP). The latter can for example be used to calculate the available and allowed battery power and maximum permissible battery current to avoid over-current operation.
In addition, the BMS software can detect specific faults inside the battery system as well as specific faults of the BMS hardware itself. In case a dangerous fault is detected by the BMS, it will put the affected part of the battery system in a safe state using the embedded battery protection unit. To achieve this safe state, contactors may be opened to separate the battery from the rest of the ship electronic system, avoiding both damage to the battery as well as to the surrounding electronic systems.
FLEXSHIP received funding from EU Horizon Europe research and innovation program under Grant Agreement no. 101095863.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 101095863
