Brill Power launches new BMS approach

Battery management systems are key to ensuring the safe and effective operation of lithium-ion and other battery chemistries. Currently, they rely on active balancing or passive balancing approaches — but the former can be costly, whilst the latter results in energy waste and reduced efficiency.

Christoph Birkl, CEO of Brill Power explained that this ‘limited ambition’ of keeping battery cells at a basic level of safe operation by stopping them from being over-charged or over-discharged, too hot or too cold, or overloaded with electric current has constrained BMS technology.

“In many battery systems that make up large scale stationary storage or power electric vehicles, there can be thousands of individual single cells and initially they will behave quite similarly,” Birkl told The Engineer. 

“Over time however, these cells can start to behave differently and degrade at different rates. This means that just one of these cells, the worst performing, limits the lifetime performance and even the safety of the whole battery system.”