Battery Module
date. 2024
city. Ypsilanti
for Electrical Vehicle Architecture Course

This battery module was designed to act as our high voltage power source in our simulated electric vehicle.
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The battery pack is in a 14s configuration with a fuse and an emergency stop button preceding the output connector. You may notice the pack actually contains 2 rows of 8 battery cells, this is because the original configuration was for a 16s battery. It was determined that the voltage should remain under 50V nominally, so the pack was reconfigured to be a 14s configuration of 3.2V batteries. To avoid wasting the plastic used to frame the 16s configuration, we simply disconnected 2 of the cells and left them as easily accessible extras.
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The BMS on top of the battery has a corresponding application by which the students can check individual cell voltages and set parameters for the battery pack such as over-current protection and low voltage protection.
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The positive terminal of the battery is connected directly to a high-rated fuse, then to an emergency stop button. This then connects to a 2 pin high voltage connector. The negative terminal of the battery goes through the BMS to a solid state relay. The corresponding terminal of the relay then goes to the negative pin of the 2 pin high voltage connector. The control side of this relay is connected to a blue 2 pin low voltage connector. This connector can be plugged into our low voltage module, where a signal from an Arduino Mega can then activate the relay.
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Finally, this module has a communication connection that allows a user to talk directly to the BMS. For example, one lab done by the students is to read the current battery voltage from the BMS and to set a boost converter to be able to charge the battery pack.