Our current generation is comfortable with recharging batteries for television remotes, and phones. However behind the scenes, scientists are continuously probing battery science, and revealing surprising facts. Today, we consider work ongoing at Stanford University into monitoring remaining battery life. We never cease to wonder how broad this tapestry is.
Monitoring Remaining Lithium-Ion Battery Life
A team at Stanford University is working on new ways to predict the internal state of lithium-ion battery systems. They say the currently-available tools are simply inadequate for electric car range estimates, as well as extending battery life.
Weakness of Current Systems Monitoring Battery Life
All batteries gradually fade, as they age, until they can no longer do their work satisfactorily. However, this process is not consistent, even within a particular brand and model range. In fact, the scientists claim most systems monitoring remaining battery life are “blind to changes in a battery’s internal workings”.
Instead, the Stanford team says these systems are “more like a doctor prescribing treatment without knowing the state of a patient’s heart and lungs”. Or for that matter “the particular ways their environment, lifestyle, stress, and luck have ravaged, or spared them”. This is why estimates of remaining life in older batteries frequently prove inaccurate.
A New Model to Predict True State in Real Time
The Stanford model relies on existing battery management system sensors, which are commonplace in modern EV’s. “Our algorithm can be integrated into current technologies, to make them operate in a smarter fashion,” they explain.
Their research focused on lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide batteries, and they were confidently able to estimate internal variables. However, their model is broad enough to estimate lithium concentration and cell capacity, while monitoring remaining battery life in other kinds of lithium batteries too.
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