A novel circuit for reducing equalizing currents in reconfigurable battery packs

The conventional battery packs with fixed configuration suffer from the famous "barrel effect" due to the characteristic differences among battery cells, which greatly reduce the effective capacity and safety. Active equalization circuit and reconfigurable battery can partly solve this problem, but there are still some drawbacks. In this paper, a novel circuit for reducing equalizing currents in reconfigurable battery packs is proposed. This topology can ensure safety by bypassing over-temperature, over-discharge, or faulty batteries, as well as reducing the difference of state of charge among cells via low equalizing currents. The proposed topology reduces the number of switches via time division multiplexing. A simulation model is built to verify the feasibility of the proposed topology.