Battery Solutions

Smarter Energy Testing: Charge, Discharge, Regenerate

With today’s mobile demands, batteries power everything from security systems to buses—requiring rigorous testing during development and production. Traditionally, charging used a programmable DC power supply, while discharging relied on electronic or resistive loads. Now, bidirectional, regenerative power supplies like the Elektro Automatik PSB Series combine both functions in one device.

The PSB Series acts as both a DC source and regenerative electronic load, seamlessly switching between modes. It recovers energy from discharging batteries and feeds it back into the local grid, reducing energy waste and facility heating costs. EA’s solutions come standard with battery test software for lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries, streamlining testing while saving space and capital.

Application Solutions

Battery Testing

Using EA PSB Bidirectional Power Supplies for Efficient Battery Testing

Batteries have become smaller and increasingly efficient as a result. To keep up with the rate of technology advancement, the equipment used to test advanced technology must also be advanced, flexible, and responsive. For these reasons, the PSB bidirectional programmable DC power supply series by EA Elektro-Automatik is a perfect fit for advanced battery test.

The PSB bidirectional supply can seamlessly switch between providing power to charge the battery and controlling the discharge of the battery. The built-in battery charge, static discharge and dynamic test functions are included with PSB, PSI, EL and ELR product series. EA can help with specifying just the right equipment and some basic guidance and considerations on how to build a robust battery test system to ensure the safety and proper functioning of all test equipment and batteries under test.

Advantages:

Static charge, static discharge and dynamic test functions built in Autoranging
Power Density
Bidirectional and regenerative
Arbitrary waveform and function generator
Low EMC
Output voltage up to 2000V
Plug and play paralleling

Battery Charging

Using programmable DC power supplies to charge batteries, such as Lithium-ion.

Customers often submit requests for medium- or high-power battery chargers to serve various projects connected to vehicle electrification (EV), such as e-bikes, hybrid or full electric cars or trucks. These battery chargers are frequently used as part of a test rig for batteries in an EV environment to carry out cycle, performance, and age tests. Also, the test rigs will usually be provided with control, monitoring and safety mechanisms matching the type of battery they are going to test.

Such test rigs aimed at battery testing will require a programmable DC power supply with adequate interface (analogue or digital, e. g. CAN) with high precision, good resolution and low ripple. It can serve as an adjustable and highly flexible DC power backbone, enabling the test rig to connect to numerous different types of battery cells or battery packs with differing nominal voltage and capacities. EAs power supplies have a built in battery charge feature that will automatically stop when the charge voltage is reached or the battery capacity is reached.

Advantages:

Static charge, static discharge and dynamic test functions built in Autoranging
Power Density
Bidirectional and regenerative
Arbitrary waveform and function generator
Low EMC
Output voltage up to 2000V
Plug and play paralleling

Battery Simulation

Using programmable bidirectional DC power supplies to simulate lead acid and lithium Ion batteries.

Bidirectional DC power supplies, by nature, are perfect for simulating a battery due to their ability to both source and sink power. By implementing an operational curve that mimics a specific battery type, a test engineer can accurately reproduce battery power to test those devices that provide charge to or receive energy from the battery. Elektro-Automatik’s Battery Simulator software makes it possible to simulate both lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries including their electrical and chemical characteristics during charge or discharge.

In cooperation with the renowned Fraunhofer institute in Germany, EA has developed algorithms to simulate batteries backed up by years of research. Now its possible to simulate a set of battery cells at a very specific state of charge(SOC) in a few minutes, rather than waiting for a battery to charge or discharge to the same SOC. The software also takes into consideration the battery capacity, internal resistance, ambient temperature and even state of health(SOH).