ELECTRIC OR HYBRID VEHICLE BATTERY PACK VOLTAGE MEASUREMENT

• US 20170057372A1
• Filed: 08/25/2015
• Published: 03/02/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 08/25/2015
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: WANG, Xu, LOFTUS, Michael Edward, TABATOWSKI-BUSH, Benjamin A.
• Application Number:
  US14/835,034
• Publication Number:
  US 20170057372A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 3/0038 relating to sensors
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 53/14 Conductive energy transfer
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 58/13 Maintaining the SoC within a determined range
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 58/21 having the same nominal voltage
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 58/22 Balancing the charge of battery modules
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 58/24 for controlling the temperature of batteries
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/3835 involving only voltage measurements
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/396 Acquisition or processing of data for testing or for monitoring individual cells or groups of cells within a battery
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/0014 Circuits for equalisation of charge between batteries
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/0016 using shunting, discharge or bypass circuits
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/0048 Detection of remaining charge capacity or state of charge [SOC]
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 10/70 Energy storage systems for electromobility, e.g. batteries
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 10/7072 Electromobility specific charging systems or methods for batteries, ultracapacitors, supercapacitors or double-layer capacitors
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 90/14 Plug-in electric vehicles

Abstract

Systems and methods for measuring voltage of a battery pack for an electrified vehicle, such as an electric or hybrid vehicle, include measuring individual cell voltages and using the individual measurements to periodically update an adjustment or offset applied to the battery pack measurement to improve accuracy of the battery pack measurement. Individual cell voltage measurements may be periodically sampled and combined with the result compared to the pack voltage under predetermined operating conditions, such as when voltage changes or variation are small. A sliding window of voltage differences that satisfy one or more specified conditions, such as being within a range of a previously determined value, may be used to generate the adjustment or offset.

Claims

1. A vehicle, comprising:

a battery pack having individual cells;

an electric machine powered by the battery pack to propel the vehicle; and

a controller programmed to control the battery in response to a published pack voltage that incorporates a pack voltage offset updated after pack voltage variation is less than a threshold and is based on a difference between a measured pack voltage and a sum of voltages of the individual cells.

2. The vehicle of claim 1 further comprising an internal combustion engine coupled to the electric machine.

3. The vehicle of claim 1, the controller further programmed to calculate the pack voltage variation based on a time derivative of the pack voltage.

4. The vehicle of claim 1, the controller further programmed to:

calculate the pack voltage offset based on a plurality of difference values, each difference value corresponding to the difference between the pack voltage and the sum of voltages of the individual cells for a corresponding periodic measurement.

5. The vehicle of claim 1, the controller further programmed to publish the pack voltage for use in controlling the vehicle based on combining a measured pack voltage with the pack voltage offset.

6. The vehicle of claim 1, the controller programmed to:

store difference values corresponding to the difference between the pack voltage and the sum of voltages of the individual cells for corresponding periodic measurements; and

compute a sliding window average of the difference values.

7. The vehicle of claim 6, the controller programmed to update the pack voltage offset based on the sliding window average.

8. The vehicle of claim 6, the controller programmed to discard difference values that exceed a corresponding difference threshold.

9. The vehicle of claim 8, the controller programmed to calculate the corresponding difference threshold based on standard deviation of the stored difference values.

10. The vehicle of claim 1, the controller programmed to store the difference between the measured pack voltage and the sum of voltages of the individual cells in persistent memory for use after a subsequent vehicle key-on event.

11. A control method for a vehicle having a battery pack including battery cells coupled to a processor programmed to perform the method, comprising:

controlling, by the processor, the battery pack using a published pack voltage based on a voltage offset adjusted using an average difference between a measured battery pack voltage and a sum of measured battery cell voltages, the published pack voltage being the voltage offset combined with the measured battery pack voltage.

12. The control method of claim 11 further comprising adjusting the voltage offset only when variation of the measured battery pack voltage is below an associated threshold.

13. The control method of claim 12 wherein the variation of the measured battery pack voltage is calculated by the processor based on a filtered battery back voltage that represents a derivative with respect to time of the battery pack voltage.

14. The control method of claim 11 further comprising calculating, by the processor, the average difference using only difference values that are within a predetermined range.

15. The control method of claim 14 wherein the predetermined range is based on plus/minus three standard deviations of difference values used to determine a current average difference.

16. The control method of claim 11 further comprising calculating the average difference based on a sliding window of difference values, each difference value being within a range based on a standard deviation of previous difference values.

17. A computer program product embodied in non-transitory computer readable storage having instructions for programming a processor to control a vehicle having a battery pack with individual battery cells, comprising instructions for:

monitoring measured battery pack voltage variation; and

adjusting a measured pack voltage by an offset that is updated based on a difference between the measured pack voltage and a sum of voltages of the individual battery cells while the variation is below a threshold.

18. The computer program product of claim 17 further comprising instructions for updating the offset based on an average difference between the measured pack voltage and the sum of voltages of the individual battery cells.

19. The computer program product of claim 17 further comprising instructions for calculating an average difference value between the measured pack voltage and a the sum of voltages using a sliding window of samples including only difference values that are within a range of previously determined difference values.

20. The computer program product of claim 17 further comprising instructions for calculating a derivative of the measured battery pack voltage to monitor the measured battery pack voltage variation.