This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification
A Solar Power Assisted Battery Balancing
System For Electric Vehicles
Chen Duan, Member, IEEE, Caisheng Wang, Senior Member, IEEE, Zongzheng Li, Jianfei
Chen, Member, IEEE, Shidao Wang, Adrian Snyder and Chenguang Jiang
Abstract — This paper proposes a solar power
assisted electric vehicle battery balancing system.
There are three operation modes of the system:
Solar-Balancing, Storage-Balancing, and Charge-
Balancing. The Solar Balancing mode charges the
battery module with the lowest SOC using the solar
power during vehicle driving; the Charge-Balancing
mode is operated when the vehicle is parked and
being charged by the conventional charger. Under
this mode, the balancing circuit discharges the
battery module with the highest SOC by transferring
the energy to an additional storage cell while the
solar panel also charges the storage cell
independently at the same time if solar power is
available. When the solar power is low, the Storage-
Balancing mode will be selected to charge the
battery module with the lowest SOC using energy
stored in the storage cell. This system eliminates the
energy loss that would otherwise happen in
conventional active and passive balancing schemes
by equalizing the battery using solar/stored energy
in the storage cell. A 48V battery pack with four 12V
battery modules system is simulated and tested. A
prototype system is developed to prove the concept.
The simulation and experimental results verify that
the proposed system not only achieves the same
balancing performance as conventional balancing
circuits, but also effectively increases the overall
usable battery energy by 2.1%~3.3% every 13.2km.
Index Terms — Batteries balancing, electrical
vehicle, solar power, energy storage, state-of-charge
(SOC)
Manuscript received October 3, 2017; revised December 27,
2017 and February 21, 2018; accepted February 27, 2018. This
work was partially supported by NSFC under award #
U1609216.
Chen Duan is with Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48306
(email: chen.duan@wayne.edu).
Caisheng Wang is with Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
48306 (email: cwang@wayne.edu).
Zongzheng Li, Jianfei Chen, Shidao Wang, Adrian Snyder an
d Chenguang Jiang are with the Wayne State University, Detroit,
MI 48306 (email: z_li@wayne.edu; gf1147@wayne.edu; shida
o.wang@wayne.edu; asnyder84@gmail.com and chenguang.jia
ng@wayne.edu).
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I. INTRODUCTION
B ATTERY systems have been widely used in
industry, transportation, energy storage
applications for more than a century. Battery
energy storage has been identified as an enabling
technology for transportation electrification and smart
grid applications and battery systems can further
catalyze the synergy between electric vehicles (EVs)
and the electric grid [1]. In high power applications such
as EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs),
the battery packs are usually formed by battery
modules/cells connected in series to increase the voltage,
and connected in parallel to increase the capacitance.
However, due to manufacturing caused variations and
varying operation conditions the imbalances reduce the
usable energy [1-5]. The imbalances of a battery pack
could lead to negative outcomes such as early
termination of charging and discharging process [6-8].
Or, it can be even worse that the battery cells over-
charged or over-discharged could be permanently
damaged [2]. To deal with the imbalance issue of
battery packs, various battery balancing topologies and
control algorithms have been researched and developed
[2-11].
Passive balancing is still one of the most widely used
methods in battery management systems (BMS) because
of the advantage of low cost [4]. The operating principle
of passive balancing is simple: When a single
cell/module reaches the charge voltage limit, it will be
discharged by a power resistor to allow other cells to be
fully charged [3, 4]. However, passive balancing is only
applied during the charge process [2] instead of for both
charge and discharge. In addition to this limitation, the
overall efficiency of the battery system with passive
balancing is relatively low due to the balancing energy
is dissipated as heat.
In contrast, active balancing circuits equalize the
battery by transferring energy from cells with higher
state-of-charge (SOC) to cells with lower SOC and can
be operated during both charge and discharge processes.
Three types of state-of-the-art active balancing circuits
are summarized in [2]: Capacitive Balancing, Inductive
Balancing and Mixed Active Balancing. For capacitive
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Transactions on Transportation Electrification

based active balancing one or more capacitors are energy source independent from the battery pack, the
switched in parallel to a cell [9, 10], the energy transfer extra energy loss of the battery pack during balancing
is the result of voltage difference between cells. The can be eliminated. By taking advantage of the solar
advantage of capacitive balancing is no complex control energy harvesting, the energy used for battery balancing
algorithm is needed. However, the balancing process is is also “free.”
very slow. In addition, the capacitance resistance brings
power loss and the balancing process is slow. The II. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
inductive balancing uses transformers with air-gapped
Fig. 1 shows the system architecture of the proposed
magnetic cores or inductors to transfer energy between
battery balancing system. Take a battery pack with 4
cells. Compared with capacitive balancing, the inductive
modules as an example. In this system, the solar panel,
balancing is able to charge a cell with equal or higher
DC/DC converter, storage cell and the high voltage
voltage with another cell. But at the same time, the iron
battery pack share a common DC bus. The maximum
loss and copper loss of the inductive components brings
output voltage of the DC/DC converter should be higher
power loss of the battery pack. The mixed active
than the battery pack terminal voltage. It can also
balancing uses DC-DC converters, e.g. Cŭk converter
automatically recognize the input voltage and output
[11, 12] to transfer energy. For mixed active balancing
terminal voltage, then charge the battery module
circuits, the power loss cannot be eliminated due to the
connected to the output. A switch box is used to link
resistance of capacitive components, iron and copper
the battery module with lowest/highest voltage that
loss of inductive components and switching loss of
needs to be charged/discharged to the DC bus. The
MOSFETs. The main disadvantage of conventional
topology of the switch box is shown in Fig. 2. The
active battery balancing system is the power loss during
storage cell is used to store the solar energy and actively
the balancing operation. The power loss wastes the
discharge energy during the time when the vehicle is
useable energy of the whole battery pack. For EVs, the
parked for charging. Thus the battery modules can be
result is the drop of driving range. To deal with the
balanced and fully charged even the solar power is
power loss issue, some other battery balancing circuits
unavailable during charging, for example when the
have been studied and developed. For example, in [13],
vehicle is parked indoor. When the vehicle is driving at
a hierarchical cascaded multi-level inverter was
night or under raining/cloudy weather without solar
proposed to achieve uniform SOC operation; In [30],
power available, the battery pack can still be balancing
Hu et.al developed a unified cost-optimal approach for
by using the energy from the storage cell. The total
charging, power management and battery degradation
capacity of the cell depends on the vehicle design
mitigation in PHEVs.
requirements. It can be small (<10%) compared to the
An ideal solution to the energy loss and efficiency
main battery pack; or, it could also be bigger (>10%)
issues of conventional battery balancing schemes is to
when used as a range-extender. For balancing purpose,
use the energy from an external source to charge the low
because the energy stored in the cell is only used for
SOC cell/modules. For example, the electric energy
equalizing the SOC variations among the battery
generated by an internal combustion engine (ICE) [18],
modules, the storage cell can be super-capacitors or
or the solar energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels, can
small battery cells with low voltage and low cost.
be used for the purpose. On the one hand, due to the
During the parking and charging period, the battery
limited area available for PV installation, it is not
pack is charged by the conventional plug-in charger,
feasible to use just solar energy to power the whole
and the battery module with the highest voltage will be
vehicle at the current stage. However, on the other hand,
actively discharged by the regulator to the storage cell.
the solar energy can be used for battery balancing even
Thus the balancing discharge energy is not wasted. It is
if the solar power is limited.
worth noticing that if the rated voltage of the storage
In this paper, a solar power assisted battery balancing
cell is equal or higher than the battery cell voltage, the
system is proposed. It has 3 operation modes: (1) when
regulator should be replaced by a Buck-Boost DC/DC
the vehicle is parked and being charged, the solar
converter to guarantee the energy can be transferred
energy as well as the actively discharged energy from
from the battery module to the storage cell. When the
high voltage battery modules will be stored in an
solar power is low, for example, during rainy, cloudy
independent storage cell. (2) When the vehicle is
time or at night, the solar panel is disconnected from the
driving in a sunny day, the solar power is used to charge
DC bus, and the storage cell acts as the balancing power
low voltage or low SOC battery modules, or the whole
source. The different operation modes are selected by 4
battery pack when all the modules are balanced. If the
dual-switches on the DC bus, i.e., DS1-DS4.
solar power is hard to harvest, for example, in cloudy,
rainy weather or at night, the battery modules with low
voltage will be charged by the storage cell. Because the
energy used for the active battery balancing comes from

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification

Fig. 1. System Architecture of the Proposed System.

Fig. 2. shows the circuit topology of the switch box.

There are 8 digital controlled switches S1-S8. If the
total battery module number is n, the number of
switches will be 2n. For practical EVs, the module
numbers are limited. For example, Tesla Model S and
Toyota Prius have 16 and 28 modules in series,
respectively [26, 27]. These switches can be packaged
into a small circuit board with MOSFETs, installed out
of the battery pack or integrated with the solar
panel/DC-DC converter. Thus no modification or re-
development is needed for battery modules, which
makes the proposed system easy to be added on.
Initially, all the switches are normally open. The control
unit measures the voltage or estimates the SOC of each
battery module and closes the corresponding switches to
link the battery module needed to be charged/discharged
to the DC bus. Only 2 switches will be closed at the
same time. For example, to charge /discharge module 1,
S1 and S3 are closed. Switches linked to the same DC
bus terminal and same battery module terminal will
never be closed at the same time to avoid short circuit of
DC bus or battery modules.
Fig. 2. Switch Box Circuit Topology.
III. OPERATING MODES AND CONTROL
ALGORITHM
In addition to the Solar-Balancing mode that charges
the battery modules at low voltage (or low SOC) by
solar power, due to the limitation and unpredictability of
the solar power, the proposed system also has a Storage-
Balancing mode to balance the battery modules during
discharging using the stored energy and a Charge-
Balancing mode to save the active discharge energy and
store together with the solar energy to the storage cell
during the vehicle’s parking period. This is a unique
feature of the proposed system, with which the solar
energy is utilized as much as possible. The operating
mode of the proposed system is selected based on the
vehicle and weather conditions. The different operating
modes are shown in Fig. 3 where the orange arrows
indicate the energy flow.

TABLE I
SOLAR-BALANCING MODE SWITCH STATUS
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 Charged Module
CLOSE OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN Module 1
OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN Module 2
OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN Module 3
OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN CLOSE Module 4
CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE Balanced

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification

Mode 1: Solar-Balancing Mode
Fig.3 (a) shows the Solar-Balancing mode of the
system. When the weather is sunny and the vehicle is
under driving, DS1 and DS4 will be closed. Under this
condition, the battery pack is discharged for energizing
the vehicle powertrain. The battery module with the
lowest SOC/voltage will be linked to the output of the
DC/DC converter and charged by the solar panel. Once
all the battery modules are balanced to the same
SOC/voltage, the whole battery pack will be connected
to the DC bus and charged. Thus the solar energy can
still be harvested. Table I shows the switch box status of
the Solar-Balancing mode. The maximum power
harvested from the solar panel and charged to the
battery module is given by
Pm = (ns × Vm) × (np × Im) × ηc
Where Pm is the maximum power charged to the
battery module by the solar panel, ns and np are the
number of series and number of parallel panels in array.
Vm and Im are the module voltage and current for each
panel at MPPT. ηc is the efficiency of the DC/DC
converter.
Where Pc is the charging power to the battery at the
lowest voltage or SOC. Vo is the output voltage of the
DC/DC converter, Voc, Rin and Vt are the charged battery
module open-circuit voltage, internal resistance and
terminal voltage, respectively.
Mode 3: Charge-Balancing Mode
The two modes demonstrated above are used when
the vehicle is driving and the battery pack is being
discharged. When the vehicle is parked and charged, the
Charge-Balancing mode will be selected by closing DS1
and DS3, shown in Fig. 3(c). Under this mode, the
battery pack is being charged by a plug-in charger. The
system monitors the battery module voltages and links
the module with the highest voltage to the DC bus. The
battery module will be discharged by the regulator.
Table III shows the switch box status of the Charge-
(1)
Balancing mode. The discharging power of the battery
module with the highest voltage under this mode is
controlled by the output voltage of the regulator and
given as
𝑉 ′𝑜 − 𝑉 ′𝑜𝑐
x 𝑉𝑡′
𝑅 ′𝑖𝑛
Pd = (3)
𝜂r

Mode 2: Storage-Balancing Mode

When there is little or no solar power to harvest (such
as during cloudy days or at night), DS1 and DS3 are
opened and DS2 and DS4 are closed to run the Storage-
Balancing mode, shown in Fig. 3(b). Under this mode,
the energy saved in the storage cell will be transferred to
the battery module at the lowest SOC/voltage through
the DC/DC converter. Since the energy saved in the
storage cell is limited, once the battery modules are
balanced, the energy flow from the storage cell will be
cut. Table II shows the switch box status of the Storage-
Balancing mode. The balancing charging power of this
mode is controlled by the output voltage of the DC/DC
converter and given as
𝑉𝑜 −𝑉𝑜𝑐
Pc = × 𝑉𝑡
𝑅𝑖𝑛
Where Pd is the discharging power of the battery with
the highest voltage. 𝑉𝑜′ is the output voltage of the
′
voltage regolator, 𝑉𝑜𝑐′ , 𝑅𝑖𝑛 and 𝑉𝑡′ are the storage cell
open-circuit voltage, internal resistance and terminal
voltage respectively. 𝜂r is the efficiency of the regulator.
The discharging energy as well as the harvested solar
energy can be saved in the storage cell. The maximum
charging power from the solar panel is also given by (1).
By operating this mode, the system guarantees the
energy used for battery balancing are all “free”. Unlike
in conventional active balancing systems, the energy for
charging low voltage cells comes from high voltage
cells. While in conventional passive balancing systems,
the high voltage battery cells are discharged by power
resistors which waste this part of energy that can be
(2) saved.

TABLE II.
STORAGE-BALANCING MODE SWITCH STATUS
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 Charged Module
CLOSE OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN Module 1
OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN Module 2
OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN Module 3
OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN CLOSE Module 4
OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN Balanced

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification

(a) (c)
Fig. 3. (a) Solar-Balancing Mode of the Proposed System. (b)
Storage Balancing Mode of the Proposed System. (c) Charge-
Balancing Mode of the Proposed System.

is the DC-bus voltage. After being charged/discharged

(b)
Fig. 4 shows the control flow chart of the proposed
system. When the vehicle battery pack starts to be
charged and discharged, the control unit of the system
will process the control algorithm as a circling loop
until the system is shut off or the battery is fully charged.
During the balancing process, when one of the battery
modules is linked to the DC bus, the control unit keeps
measuring the module voltages only for safety
protection, not for charge/discharge module selection.
This is because, under this condition, the terminal
voltage measured for the charging/discharging module
for a certain period t, all switches will be opened for a
sampling time T and T=1/f, where f is the sampling
frequency of the voltage measurement. A new decision
on battery module to be charged / discharged will be
made based on the module voltage measured on
sampling period T. Another reason of doing this is for
short-circuit protection. The period T also acts as a
dead-band between switches status changing. Thus the
switches connected to the same terminal of DC bus or
battery modules will not be closed at the same time. It is
important that the dead-band T << t for balancing speed
and harvesting as much solar energy as possible.
IV. SYSTEM MODELING AND SIMULATION
To evaluate the balancing and energy saving
performance of the proposed system, as well as to
compare with conventional battery balancing systems, a
model-based simulation has been carried out. The
modeling and simulation diagram is shown in Fig. 5.
The vehicle simulation model is developed in
MATLAB/Simulink as a backward model. The input of
the model is a standard drive-cycle. The vehicle
dynamics subsystem calculates the mechanical power

TABLE III.
CHARGE-BALANCING MODE SWITCH STATUS
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 Discharged Module
CLOSE OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN Module 1
OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN OPEN Module 2
OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN Module 3
OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSE OPEN CLOSE Module 4
OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN Balanced

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Transactions on Transportation Electrification

the same current. The internal-resistance circuit model

of the batteries is shown in Fig. 7, where Voc is the open-
circuit voltage and the Vt is the terminal voltage of the
battery. The open circuit voltage is calculated from the
terminal voltage and the charging/discharging current.
Based on the open circuit voltage, the SOC of a battery
can be obtained through a look-up table shown in Fig. 8.
The curve in Fig. 8 describes the general SOC-OCV
relationship of a lead-acid battery at 20°C. Although the
battery modules have different capacities, all the
modules are modeled to have the same internal
resistance and follow the look-up table in Fig. 8. Since
the battery modules are connected in series to provide a
48 V output voltage, a weaker module will have a lower
terminal voltage during discharging. The total SOC of
the whole battery pack is calculated from equation (4).
It is worth noticing that battery polarization and
temperature effects are not taken into account of the
TABLE IV.
SIMULATION VEHICLE MODEL PARAMETERS

Description Value
Vehicle Curb Weight 344kg
Fig. 4. Control Flow Chart of the Proposed System.
Driver and Load Weight 100kg
Vehicle Cross Section 2.37m2
required to overcome road resistance and acceleration Drag Coefficient 2.51
resistance. The powertrain subsystem, which includes Rolling Friction Coefficient 0.04
electric motor, inverter and driveline, calculates the Mass Factor 1.1
electric power requirement from the mechanical power. Traction Motor Rated/Max 3kW/8kW
The electric power traction load discharges the battery, Power
and the balancing circuit equalizes the battery modules Differential Gear Ratio 16.82
by utilizing both traditional and proposed balancing
Driveline Efficiency 98%
schemes. The vehicle model parameters are shown in
Table IV. This vehicle is modeled as a utility cart with Traction Motor Efficiency 90%
four 12V rated Lead-acid battery modules in series with (constant)
slightly different capacities but the same initial SOCs. Inverter Efficiency 95%
Manhattan Bus Cycle (MBC) is selected as the Balancing Efficiency 95%
standard drive-cycle for comparing different battery Battery 1 Ah Capacity 50Ah
balancing methodologies under discharging. This is Battery 2 Ah Capacity 49Ah
because the top speed of the MBC is less than 25mph, Battery 3 Ah Capacity 47Ah
which fits the operating condition of utility vehicles. Battery 4 Ah Capacity 48Ah
The vehicle speed, traction power and battery current
Initial SOC 90%
rate vs. time of MBC for the simulation vehicle are
shown in Fig. 6 [24]. Battery Internal Resistance 15mΩ
The 4 battery modules are modeled as internal-
resistance circuits (Rint model) in series discharged by

Fig. 5. Vehicle Modeling and Simulation Diagram.

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internal-resistance model, which may give less accurate

results in real battery modeling and parameters
identification. Nevertheless, for vehicle level modeling
and battery balancing simulation, the Rint model is able
to provide reasonably accurate and convincing results.
One of our future tasks is to use more detailed model
and more advanced SOC methods such as the ones
developed by the authors and other researchers [28 - 30],
[33], [34] to further verify the method.

𝐶1 ×𝑆𝑂𝐶1 +𝐶2 ×𝑆𝑂𝐶2 +𝐶3 ×𝑆𝑂𝐶3 +𝐶4 ×𝑆𝑂𝐶4

SOCall = (4)
𝐶1 +𝐶2 +𝐶3 +𝐶4

Where C1, C2, C3 and C4 are the Ah capacities of the 4

battery modules, respectively.
The simulation studies have been carried out for 4
scenarios: no-balancing, conventional active-balancing
that transfers energy from high SOC battery modules to Fig. 8. Battery SOC vs. Open Circuit Voltage.
low SOC modules with 25W constant balancing power,
Storage-Balancing with a 25W constant power, and
Solar-Balancing with the balancing power input shown
in Fig. 9, which can be repeated as necessary in the
simulation studies. The power curve in Fig. 9 was
recorded from an actual 100W solar panel. The solar
panel and the battery have been installed on a vehicle
that runs a random city cycle, moves in all directions
under the sun and through building/tree shadows. This
makes the solar power data close to real traffic situation.

Fig. 9. Recorded Solar Power for a Random City Cycle.

For each mode simulation, the vehicle runs 3 MBCs

Fig. 6. Manhattan Bus Cycle Feature for Simulation Vehicle.
Fig. 7. Battery Internal-Resistance Circuit Model.
back to back to achieve exactly same discharging
condition. The total driving mileage of 3 MBCs is
around 13.22km. The total energy input by the Solar-
Balancing mode and Storage-Balancing mode for 3
MBCs is 32.84Wh and 25Wh respectively. Fig. 10
shows the battery module SOCs for each mode, with a
50s zoom in plot for dynamic analysis. Table V shows
the total SOC of the battery pack calculated from
equation (4) for each balancing mode.
From Fig. 10 it can be observed that without
balancing, the SOC difference becomes obvious when
the battery pack’s overall SOC reaches about 30%. This
would result in over-discharging of low SOC battery
modules or shrink vehicle mileage if a same cut-off
SOC threshold was set for all the battery modules. But
with any modes of balancing, the battery module SOC
can be equalized and over-discharging can be avoided.
Dynamic operating analysis can be carried out by

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zooming in a 50s period for each balance mode. From

Fig. 10 (b)-(d), it can be observed the active balancing
provides the fastest response that could keep SOC
difference between modules <0.1%. This is because the
active balancing discharges the high SOC module
simultaneously when charging the low SOC module.
But as a result, the high SOC module has to handle a
higher discharging rate. In addition, the pack effective
capacity drops faster due to the balancing power loss,
which means less energy can be applied to the vehicle
powertrain compared to the proposed system. For the
Solar-Balancing mode, the short-time balancing
response depends on the solar power. The SOC
difference can be limited within 0.1% when high solar
power is available around 660s. But in the worst case,
the SOC difference can also be limited within 0.2%.
The Storage-Balancing mode provides a relatively slow
but stable balancing response that could also limit the
SOC difference within 0.2% in average. The simulation
validates that although the response speeds of the Solar-
Balancing and Storage-Balancing modes are slightly
slower than the active balancing, the battery modules
can still be equalized effectively with SOC difference
<0.2%. More importantly, the proposed method could
improve the effective capacity of the battery pack by 2.1% (b)
(for Storage-Balancing) to 3.3% (for Solar-Balancing)
every 13.2 km compared to conventional active
balancing circuits, as shown in Table V. The
improvement mainly comes from the following aspects:
harvesting the solar energy and eliminating the energy
loss of internal transfer.

(c)

(a)

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Fig. 11. Prototype Vehicle.

The battery balancing system is installed onboard of

the vehicle and wired to the solar panel, 48V battery
pack and the storage cell which is a 12V/7Ah rated
Lead-acid battery. The DC/DC converter is formed by 2
modules: the buck-boost module with 10~60V input and
12~80V output. The output voltage and current limits of
the buck-boost module can be manually set-up; the buck
(d)
module has an input of 60 V and a 12V/24V/48V auto-
Fig. 10. Battery Module SOCs of (a) No-Balancing; (b) output-recognition solar charging controller. The control
Conventional Active Balancing; (c) Solar-Balancing; (d)
Storage-Balancing for 3 Manhattan Bus Cycles.
unit of the system is a National Instrument (NI) DAQ
connected to an onboard desktop. The NI DAQ
TABLE V. monitors the voltage of each battery module and
TOTAL FINAL SOC FOR EACH BALANCING SCHEME controls the switches S1~S8 based on the operation
Balancing Active- Solar- Storage- modes. Each switch of S1~S8 is formed by 2 DC-
Scheme Balancing Balancing Balancing Controlled DC solid-state relays connected back to back.
SOC 29.2% 32.5% 31.3% This means the drain of internal MOSFETs of two
relays are connected, and both the relays are driven by
V. SYSTEM PROTOTYPING & EXPERIMENTAL the same gate signal. Fig. 12 shows the integrated
VERIFICATION battery balancing system, the topology of the DC/DC
converter, and the graphical user interface (GUI) on the
To experimentally verify the functionality and screen. The voltages of the battery modules and storage
performance of the proposed system, a prototype has cell, balancing current and switch status of S1~S8 are
been developed based on the diagram in Fig. 1 and monitored on the GUI and recorded via the NI DAQ
integrated into a vehicle. The vehicle is a golf cart with system.
48V/3kW electric powertrain. Two 18V/50W solar
panels are installed on the roof of the cart in parallel
with a total of 100 W rated power. The 48V battery
pack of the vehicle is formed by four 12V/100Ah-rated
aged lead-acid batteries in series. The vehicle prototype
is shown in Fig. 11. It is worth noting that for battery
modular balancing there is no much fundamental
difference between lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries:
The solar energy is used for charging battery modules
with low voltage/SOC. However, for lithium-ion
batteries that require SOC estimation and management,
it is suggested to balance the batteries based on SOC
estimation that can be done via the methods reported in
literature [28-30], [33-34], instead of the terminal (a)
voltage measurement only.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification

of the Solar-Balancing mode for one road test. From the

switching status it can be observed the designed system
works properly on selecting different battery module for
charging. The battery pack was well balanced with
6~7A current from the solar panel. For Storage-
Balancing mode, the output voltage and current of the
buck-boost module are set to 25V and 3A, respectively
(b)
(75W power limit). This safety limit is needed because
unlike solar panel the storage cell could provide
damaging current when the storage cell powered
DC/DC converter’s output voltage is considerably
higher than the battery module terminal voltage,
considering voltage drop during discharging. Fig. 16
shows the data of the Storage-Balancing mode under
one road test. Although the voltage differences between
the battery modules are slightly larger than the Solar-
Balancing mode due to the current limitation, the
balancing performance is still remarkable compared to
the case of no-balancing. This result also proves that
when the solar current drops to 2~3A due to cloud or
building/tree shadows, the system can still provide
effective balancing.
(c)
Fig.12. (a) Integrated Battery Balancing System. (b) DC/DC
Converter Circuit. (c) System Control GUI.

The prototype was firstly tested without battery

balancing under charging and discharging as a baseline
for future comparison. For charging, the battery pack
was charged by a 48V lead-acid charger supplies
10A/50.8V CC-CV mode. Fig. 13 shows the battery
module voltages during a charging period of 220 s.
From the figure it can be observed that the voltage of
battery 1 is higher than other 3 batteries, which means
under CC-CV, battery 1 would be over-charged while
the rest cannot be fully charged. For discharging, the
vehicle was running a random city cycle for 840s Fig. 13. Battery Module Voltages during Charging W/O
without balancing. Fig. 14 shows the battery voltages Balancing.
during discharging, where battery 1 has the lowest
voltage while battery 2 has the highest. From the
charging and discharging voltages it can be seen battery
1’s capacity is most degraded while battery 2 keeps the
most capacitance. Battery balancing is definitely needed
for this pack. It is noted for the prototype proposed in
the manuscript with lead-acid batteries, the voltage
difference based balancing is sufficient to avoid over-
charging/discharging of the weak module. In addition,
from the dynamic point of view, the recoded voltage
data could better demonstrate the balancing effects
during short drive cycles.
For the Solar-Balancing mode, the output voltage and
current of the buck-boost module are set to 60V and 2A,
respectively (120W power limit). The output voltage of
Fig. 14. Battery Module Voltages during Discharging W/O
the buck module is set to auto-recognition and no Balancing.
current limitation. The vehicle was run under a sunny
weather for this mode of testing. Fig. 15 shows the data

2332-7782 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification
Fig. 15. Battery Module Voltages during Discharging With Solar-
Balancing.
For the Charge-Balancing mode, the output voltage of
the regulator module is set to 15V, and the max output
current is set to 7A. Fig. 17 shows the curves of the
battery module voltages, balancing current and switch
operation sequences during a period of 300s under the
Charge-Balancing mode for one charging cycle with the
same 5A/50.8V charger. From the figure, it can be
observed the terminal voltages of individual battery
modules are well balanced through the recorded data
contains some noises due to switching. The energy
transferred due to balancing is saved in the storage cell
instead of being wasted on resistors. It is noted that for
the tests of the 3 balancing mode, the sampling and
switching frequency is 10 Hz.
Fig. 16. Battery Module Voltages during Discharging With the
Storage-Balancing.
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Fig. 17. Battery Module Voltages during Charging With the
Charge-Balancing.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes a solar power assisted battery
balancing system for electric vehicles based on solar
power harvesting and storage. The system is designed to
charge the battery module with the lowest SOC/voltage
during discharging using the solar energy or energy
from a storage cell to avoid the energy loss that happens
in conventional active and passive battery balancing
schemes. When the vehicle is parked and being charged,
the proposed system discharges the battery module with
the highest SOC/voltage by transferring energy to the
storage cell. Thus the energy dissipation of conventional
charging systems is avoided. At the same time, the solar
panel could also charge the storage cell to realize the
maximum solar energy harvesting. Real solar power
data based simulation studies have been carried out for
the system with a 100W solar panel under Manhattan
Bus Cycle. The simulation results show that the
proposed system can save 2.1%~3.3% total capacity of
a 50Ah battery pack every 13.2 km. When the solar
current is around 6~7A, the battery modules can be well
balanced. Even when the solar current drops to 2~3A or
utilizing cell-storage mode with the same current
limitation, the balancing is still considerably effective.
The actual road testing of the system prototype confirms
the functionality of the system. Both the simulation
studies and the actual experimental tests have verified
that the proposed balancing system can effectively
balance the battery modules under different scenarios of
driving/discharging and parking/charging.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2018.2817123, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification
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