Brill Power
University of Oxford

Optimising battery performance through advanced battery management system diagnostics

Commercial batteries often struggle to access 100% of their available stored energy, and this is due to efficiency loses and variability in the battery components. Many factors are involved in this loss, for example variations in state of charge and state of energy estimation during charge and discharge. Tackling these challenges will allow us to optimise the energy storage capabilities in next generation batteries. Such optimisations will be vital to delivering cost effective energy usage and thereby reducing wastage and pursuing key sustainability goals in the future.

Joe’s project will model the battery pack as a whole, instead of traditional methods which often model only singular cells within the battery. By generating key data insights about the internal conditions of the battery, the inefficiencies and key fault points can be identified and targeted. The project will also focus on areas of modelling that could benefit from deeper understanding, particularly in modern battery chemistries such as lithium-iron-phosphate and sodium-ion. These are both emerging technologies whose internal chemistry requires further investigation, but are seen as game-changing by automotive markets for the future of sustainable electric vehicles.

Novel battery types have huge potential in solving a number of contemporary energy and materials crises, further research on engineering integration outside of laboratory conditions is required. With better modelling and diagnostics of new battery types as being pursued in Joe’s work, there is potential employ these solutions more widely in the future in real-world commercial settings.

Biography
Joe graduated from Queen’s University in Ontario Canada with a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Sciences majoring in Electric Engineering, and made the Dean’s Honour List win 2017. Joe has worked as an Electronics Engineer at Brill Power since 2019 on hardware development for power electronics converters, and has previously worked at Canadian engineering firm Clear Blue Technologies.