Analysis of a Symmetric Active Cell Balancer with a Multi-winding Transformer

Abstract

This paper analyzes a symmetric active cell balancer for a battery management system. The considered cell balancer uses a forward converter in which the circuit structure is symmetric. This cell-balancing method uses fewer switches and is simpler than the previously proposed active cell-balancing circuits. Active power switches of this cell-balancing circuit operate simultaneously with the same pulse width modulation signals. Therefore, this cell-balancing circuit requires less time to be balanced than a previous bidirectional-forward-converter-based cell balancer. This paper analyzes the operational principles and modes of this cell balancer with computer-based circuit simulation results as well as experimental results in which each unbalanced cell is equalized with this cell balancer. The maximum power transfer efficiency of the investigated cell balancer was 87.5% from the experimental results. In addition to the experimental and analytical results, this paper presents the performance of this symmetric active cell-balancing method.