Cummins Inc.

Pramod Suresh Magadi

Martin T Books

Bradford K Palmer

John P O'Brien

Joseph E Paquette

Jaroslaw Leonarski

Erik L Piper

Subbarao Varigonda

Bradford K O Palmer

Duane J Szymanski

Carl A Jones

John O O'BRIEN

Duane P Szymanski

The present disclosure provides a system and method for selecting a battery pack that is used to pre-charge a high-voltage DC bus of an electric vehicle. A round-robin architecture is disclosed that prevents repeat selection of battery packs in order to prevent burnout of a resistor of the battery pack resulting from rapid subsequent pre-charging events. The system and method provided includes an easy solution that is scalable to a system with any number of battery packs, does not require any additional hardware, and is an inexpensive technique to protect an expensive component of the electric vehicle.

Battery pack selection for pre-charging of DC bus

The present disclosure provides a method of selectively charging or discharging a system with multiple battery packs connected in parallel when at least one of the battery packs has a significantly different voltage or states of charge (SOCs) than the other battery packs. The method includes charging or discharging the battery pack(s) with a voltage or state of charge (SOC) farthest from a target value until the voltage(s) or SOC(s) is within a range of another battery pack at which point the battery packs may be connected and charging or discharging can resume for the set of connected packs. This process is repeated until all the battery packs are at a predetermined minimum or maximum voltage or SOC threshold. The present disclosure also provides a method for selectively operating and charging at least one of a plurality of battery packs depending on the respective states of the battery packs.

Battery charging and discharging of multiple packs at different states of charge (SOCs)

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Indianapolis, IN, United States of America

Pramod Suresh Magadi