Self-Equalization of Cell Voltages To Prolong The Life of VRLA Batteries in Standby Applications
Self-Equalization of Cell Voltages To Prolong The Life of VRLA Batteries in Standby Applications
Self-Equalization of Cell Voltages To Prolong The Life of VRLA Batteries in Standby Applications
Abstract—The valve-regulated lead-acid battery has been the age is typically 24–48 V in emergency lighting and telecoms
work horse of standby applications for several decades. Float applications; in wind farms, the voltage is typically 288 V,
charging is normally implemented in these systems. However, float which means that there are more cells in series, and this makes
charging tends to overcharge the battery, causing water loss and
grid corrosion which shorten the service life of the battery. This a compelling case for equalization of cell voltages.
limitation may be avoided by using cell voltage equalization and Float charging tends to overcharge the battery at the end
temperature-compensated interrupted charge control (TCICC). of the charging process. The capacitances of the cells are not
Cell voltage equalization reduces the voltage distribution range matched, and therefore, the cell voltages are not distributed
over many cells, which, in turn, means that there are fewer cells equally, which means that some cells are overcharged while
with either overvoltage or undervoltage, both of which shorten the
life of the battery. TCICC can increase the service life of the bat- others are undercharged. Overvoltage in a cell causes hydro-
tery by avoiding overvoltage. Experimental evidence is presented gen evolution and water loss at the negative electrode of the
to validate the new approach by comparing float charging and cell; grid corrosion occurs at the positive electrode [8], [9].
TCICC in terms of battery voltage equalization and temperature Undercharging causes sulphation [10], which reduces the active
response. area of the plates and can even cause plate buckling. All of
Index Terms—Batteries, charge equalization, emergency power these effects shorten the service life of the battery [11]–[14].
supplies, float charging, temperature compensation. Equalization circuits exist to deal with this situation [15], [16],
but of course, more circuitry means reduced reliability. The
I. I NTRODUCTION higher voltages encountered in wind farms give a proportion-
ally greater exposure to the detrimental effects of a lack of
Le = Lp Fta (3)
where Lp is the projected service life of the battery. Fig. 3. Temperature compensation algorithm for ICC regime.
This shows that for every 10 ◦ C rise in battery ambient
temperature, the expected life is reduced by 50%. Conversely,
properly chosen temperature compensation can greatly improve
service life.
Temperature compensation in float charging of VRLA batter-
ies normally involves adjusting the float voltage [19]–[23]. The
float voltage would decrease linearly from a maximum value
at the minimum operating temperature to a minimum value at
the maximum expected operating temperature. Self-discharge is
mitigated at low temperature, and thermal runaway is prevented
at high temperature. Typical values might be 2.37 V at 10 ◦ C
and 2.15 V at 50 ◦ C. This simple approach will not suffice for
the ICC regime.
The ICC regime must maintain the battery in a high SoC
state in Mode 4. Mode 4 is triggered when the battery voltage
reaches Vut . Fig. 2 shows the voltage response of a 12-V 16-Ah
VRLA battery to a 0.05Crated current pulse at different tem- Fig. 4. Laboratory setup of the battery test system.
peratures, when the battery is at 99.5% SoC. There is a fivefold
increase in battery voltage when the temperature drops from Vut too early when the temperature is low, resulting in an
45 ◦ C to 15 ◦ C. Evidently, the trigger for Mode 4 is strongly undercharged battery. We can compensate for this by reducing
influenced by temperature, i.e., the battery voltage will reach the duty cycle of the pulse current charging state in Mode 3
HURLEY et al.: SELF-EQUALIZATION OF CELL VOLTAGES TO PROLONG THE LIFE OF VRLA BATTERIES 2117
TABLE I
CHARGE PARAMETERS OF TCICC AND FLOAT-CHARGE REGIMES
Fig. 10. Voltage distribution for battery modules for full charging cycle.
Yuk Sum Wong (M’04) received the B.Eng., Werner Hugo Wölfle was born in Bad Schussen-
M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and elec- ried, Germany. He received the Diplom-Ingenieur
tronic engineering from the University of Hong degree in electronics from the University of Stuttgart,
Kong, Hong Kong, in 1997, 2000, and 2008, Stuttgart, Germany, in 1981, and the Ph.D. degree in
respectively. electrical engineering from the National University
He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, in 2003.
the Power Electronics Research Centre, National From 1982 to 1985, he was a Development Engi-
University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, from 2007 neer for power converters in space craft applications
to 2008. He is currently a Research Fellow with with Dornier Systems GmbH, where he was a Re-
the Energy Studies Institute, National University of search and Development Manager for industrial ac
Singapore, Singapore. His research interests include and dc power from 1986 to 1988. Since 1989, he has
system optimizations of hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and opti- been a Managing Director of Convertec Ltd., Wexford, Ireland, a company
mizations of charge regimes for batteries in cyclic and standby applications. that develops high-reliability power converters for industrial applications. He
is an Adjunct Professor of electrical engineering at the National University of
Ireland, Galway.