Company info:
Name: GENPORT srl
Date founded: 2009
Location: Vimercate (IT), Commerce (US)
Genport srl makes advanced hybrid power sources for extreme environments suitable in residential, emergency, telecommunication, agriculture, electro-medical, industrial applications.
Partners:
Innovation Management Partner:
Predictive Control System to Maximize Lifetime of Hybrid Fuel Cells
Challenge
The vast majorities of today’s Battery Management Systems (BMS) for commercial lithium ion battery modules are based on empirical models of the lithium ion cell. Their prediction capabilities are limited and they cannot be used to estimate the State of Health (SOH), the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) and the Aging of the cells.
The main challenge to reduce the total cost of ownership concerns an optimized management of electrochemical power sources through adaptive control strategies and prognostic capabilities.
Solution
Genport designs and realizes hybrid fuel cells (HFC) combining smart energy storage systems based on Li-ion batteries with Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells. In order to improve reliability and lifetime, Genport has developed an algorithm capable to predict internal states (SOH, RUL) of lithium ion batteries based on their electro-chemical model (ECM).
Within HYPEMLIFE, Genport has embedded a reduced order version of the original ECM into the STM32 high-end board.
The STM32 communicates with the Li-ion battery and PEM fuel cell and will read actual voltage, current and temperature values for the battery; from those variables, HIPEMLIFE algorithm continuously detects the internal states of the hybrid power source.
FED4SAE Support
HYPEMLIFE has been implemented on the ST Microelectronics processor STM32 family and it has been validated on Genport’s 7kW HFC system at the Energy Electronic Testbed of Fraunhofer IISB.
Impact
HYPEMLIFE prognostics capabilities has minimized the overall cost of energy and improved the power quality of hybrid power sources while matching uncertainty of renewable energy sources with variability of load profile.
Integrated inside a BMS the prognostic tool provide high precision real time estimations of important internal states of the battery. It also adds diagnostic capabilities embedded inside a battery tester by identifying latent faults in the cells.
The collaboration with ST Microelectronics and Fraunhofer Institute is moving Genport to the forefront in the design of advanced electronic & control solutions to provide better power solutions to the cleantech industry
.
