A conventional internal combustion engine vehicle uses fossil fuel as the energy source. And a high voltage battery stores energy for propulsion of Battery Electric Vehicle. Electric car battery modelling would be helpful for doing electric vehicle-related projects.
Battery constitutes the major part of Electric Cars in terms of cost and weight. Electric Car battery and their characteristics differ from the battery used in the vehicle for ignition and lighting purpose. Li-ion, Lead acid, etc are a few batteries used in Electric Cars. Read more about Electric Vehicle batteries here. In this post, we are discussing electric car battery modelling and life analysis.
Batteries are a major part of Electric Vehicle and they play an important role to decide the range, cost, and life of the electric vehicle. Life of electric car battery would impact the cost of an electric vehicle. Battery replacement cost is a burden on the customer of an electric vehicle.
I do have personal experience in driving an electric scooter that my mother owns. You can read about my electric scooter experience here.
How would regenerative braking affect the life of Electric car battery?
Regenerative braking is a kind of braking of vehicle in which kinetic energy that would have dissipated as heat energy otherwise, is stored and use again. In an electric vehicle the energy is taken back and stores in the battery when the vehicle decelerates, climb down, and brakes.
Life of battery is highly affected by frequent charge-discharge cycles. Recuperation (regenerative braking) charges the battery for a short span of time and this process adds to the number of charge-discharge cycles.
Energy consumption of vehicle when it travels in a specific driving cycle and energy flow to and fro the battery would be calculated and impact on the life of the battery can be analyzed. Electric car battery modelling would be the first part of the project since the model is necessary to analyze the life of the battery.
Super Capacitor Integrated Regenerative Braking System
Super Capacitor is a high value capacitor which can store around 10 to 100 times the energy per unit volume than electrolytic capacitors. They can accept and deliver charges much faster than rechargeable batteries and tolerate more of charge-discharge cycles.
A supercapacitor can be used in Electric Cars to store the energy generated at a high rate during braking. Similarly, the high power demand to the motor of Electric Vehicle at the time of startup and sudden acceleration can also be met using supercapacitor.
Supercapacitor costs much higher than Li-ion battery (10 times) and voltage range is less. Another drawback of a supercapacitor is it’s discharging characteristics. Voltage drops almost linearly with the discharge of a capacitor where voltage is almost constant for a battery at its useful range of operation.
A supercapacitor can act as an intermediate stage between battery and motor of an electric vehicle.
They can be configured in such a way that to minimize random charge-discharge cycles and sudden discharges of battery to enhance life.
Life, cost, and performance analysis of the total vehicle energy storage system could be modelled.
Following are a few ideas for electric vehicle battery model related project.
- How could be the energy split between the battery and supercapacitor for so that the life of the battery is maximum
- How could be the energy split between the capacitor and battery for minimizing the life cost of the whole system
Conclusion
We explained about electric vehicle battery modelling and life analysis. Think about the topics and come up with awesome academic projects in the field of Electric Vehicle. You can read 100+ electrical vehicle projects and List of 55 electric vehicle projects also. Effect of regenerative braking on the battery of the electric vehicle is the main focus of this post. What do you think about the effectiveness of regenerative braking?
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