Modelling and simulation of a distributed battery management system

This paper discusses the modelling and simulation of a distributed battery management system with a continuous and discrete-event simulation environment. The simulation model focuses on replicating the generic components within the system into model blocks to provide a structured approach in simulating battery networks. The simulation model also deals with three key network levels, which are the process level, the gateway level and the user or remote management level. A customised library of categorised network components allows for quick, easy and efficient model construction and testing of system or network performance. The simulation model possesses the ability to communicate with external applications such as sophisticated and specialised battery management activities, which allow short-term monitoring and control algorithms for simulating process level interaction, long-term monitoring and supervision at the gateway level and knowledge and data management at the remote management level. These features of the simulation model allow for encapsulation of the primary battery system aspects of battery operation management, network communication management and network data management. A case study of a typical 4-string battery network model is presented to illustrate the use of model building blocks in constructing, designing and configuring battery network simulation models and in determining network performance.