Coulombic efficiency estimation technique for eco-routing in electric vehicles

A battery source is an indispensable component in electric vehicles and its efficient usage results in improvement of battery life. The amount of energy stored in batteries, including their state of charge and efficiency, are critical metrics for evaluating vehicle performance. This article presents an automated motor-generator linked technique for estimating battery-related parameters, which is an essential aspect of eco-routing in electric vehicles. This system enables discharging of a battery at various current rates by constant resistive loads which are electronically applied. The charging process however uses a charger attached to various sensors for estimating the current. The coulomb counting method has been used which provides information of State of Charge and Coulombic Efficiency of the test battery. Since battery behavior is dynamic; the energy source was charged and discharged over numerous cycles at various current rates. The experimental set-up uses sensors for accurate data acquisition. In addition to the experimental set-up, an electrical circuit battery model has also been simulated in this work. All simulation as well as post processing tasks have been done in the Arduino-MATLAB environment. The main highlight of this system is that the system is portable, easy to operate, low cost and can be used to test all types of batteries. The proposed system is simple and has yielded good results. The battery parameters obtained prove to be vital for range determination in eco-routing of electric vehicles among other applications.