Back to results
US 2020/0269704 A1Published application
System and method to improve range and fuel economy of electrified vehicles using life balancing
AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC
InventorsXiaohong Nina DUAN, Richard Dyche ANDERSON
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A vehicle includes a traction battery comprising a plurality of cells. The vehicle also includes a plurality of power converters each electrically coupled between a corresponding group of cells and an electrical bus. A controller is programmed to allocate current demand to the power converters and operate the power converters to minimize energy consumption and losses.
Claims20
A vehicle comprising;
- a traction battery comprised of cells;
- power converters, each electrically coupled between a corresponding group of cells and an electrical bus;
- and
- a controller programmed to
- allocate current demand to the power converters,
- responsive to currents allocated to a subset of the power converters having magnitudes less than a threshold, redistribute a sum of the currents to power converters not in the subset and operate the subset to provide no current, and
- increase current magnitude of each of the power converters not in the subset by a factor that is a ratio of the current demand to a total current already allocated to each of the power converters not in the subset.
4 more elements
(canceled)
A method comprising:
- operating, by a controller, power converters electrically coupled between corresponding groups of battery cells and an electrical bus to satisfy a current demand of the electrical bus by allocating a portion of the current demand to each of the power converters,
- responsive to a subset of the power converters being allocated currents having magnitudes less than a threshold, redistributing a sum of the currents to power converters not in the subset and operating the subset to provide no current, wherein the currents include positive currents and negative currents;
- redistributing a sum of the positive currents to power converters with positive current allocation;
- and
- redistributing a sum of the negative currents to power converters with negative current allocation.
2 more elements
(canceled)
A vehicle electrical system comprising:
- a plurality of power converters each electrically coupled between a group of battery cells and an electrical bus;
- and
- a controller programmed to
- allocate current demand to the power converters,
- responsive to currents allocated to a subset of the power converters having magnitudes less than a threshold, redistribute a sum of the currents to power converters not in the subset such that a total current provided by the power converters is same before and after redistribution of the currents and operate the subset to provide no current, and
- responsive to currents allocated to all of the power converters having magnitudes less than the threshold, redistribute the current demand to a group of the power converters such that current is supplied by a set of power converters that each provide current that exceeds the threshold.
3 more elements
(canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.