Hardware building blocks of a hierarchical battery management system for a fuel cell HEV

The architecture of a hierarchical Battery Management System is presented focusing on the design of its hardware building blocks. The system is intended to be used in a fuel-cell powered van and the design is optimized for large lithium battery packs. The developed BMS provides monitoring and protection functions, together with a high efficiency cell equalization circuit that can selectively adjust the State of Charge of each cell of the pack. A preliminary experimental validation of some building blocks is presented and measurement results are discussed.