arXiv subjects

Anna Stefanopoulou

Publications and source records attributed to Anna Stefanopoulou.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Health feature extraction from battery energy storage system field fault data

Health monitoring methods are critical for lithium-ion battery modules connected to the grid to prevent faults that can lead to catastrophic events. However, assessing the health of cells in modules from their operational data presents challenges including variable operating conditions, which directly confound health features, and sparse sensing in the modules, particularly within cells in parallel, which prevents observing critical states of individual cells. Here, we present a framework for extracting and calibrating health features for battery modules from their operational data to identify discriminative features for separating faulty parallel-connected cell groups within the modules. We applied this framework to operational data from 25 commercial grid-connected lithium-ion Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) modules. Each module consisted of 14 series-connected parallel groups, one of which was confirmed as faulty via post-mortem investigation; in total, the dataset included 25 faulty and 325 non-faulty cell groups. A statistical evaluation of these calibrated features demonstrated that group-level capacity, capacity degradation rate, and dV/dQ peak heights separate faulty parallel-connected cell groups within the modules with statistical significance (p<0.05). Conversely, group internal resistance did not (p>0.05), indicating that increased resistance was not a primary characteristic of the faults in this dataset. These findings challenge the exclusive reliance on resistance features for fault detection. The observed feature signatures suggest potential failure mechanisms, furthering the understanding of fault behavior in lithium-ion battery modules during field operation. More importantly, this work demonstrates a framework for robustly monitoring the health of cells in lithium-ion battery modules under real-world operations.

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arXiv2026

Modeling and Estimation of Solid Electrolyte Interphase during Formation in Battery Manufacturing

The solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) - a critical passivation layer that governs the longevity, safety, and efficiency of lithium-ion batteries - is created during the last step in cell manufacturing called cell formation. Conventional cell formation protocols are largely empirical, resulting in long processing times and limited control over the SEI growth rate that influences SEI quality and lifetime performance. This paper develops a control-oriented, semi-empirical model to estimate SEI thickness growth from terminal voltage and cell expansion measurements acquired in-operando during manufacturing using low-cost micrometer-precision integrated-sensing fixture. Model parameters are calibrated against cell formation data, and an unscented Kalman filter is employed to estimate the SEI film growth. The results lay the foundation for future closed-loop control of SEI growth, enabling high-quality and more efficient formation processes.

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arXiv2024

Extra Throughput versus Days Lost in load-shifting V2G services: Influence of dominant degradation mechanism

Electric vehicle (EV) batteries are often underutilized. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services can tap into this unused potential, but increased battery usage may lead to more degradation and shorter battery life. This paper substantiates the advantages of providing load-shifting V2G services when the battery is aging, primarily due to calendar aging mechanisms (active degradation mechanisms while the battery is not used). After parameterizing a physics-based digital-twin for three different dominant degradation patterns within the same chemistry (NMC), we introduce a novel metric for evaluating the benefit and associated harm of V2G services: \textit{throughput gained versus days lost (TvD)} and show its strong relationship to the ratio of loss of lithium inventory (LLI) due to calendar aging to the total LLI ($\text{LLI}_\text{Cal}/\text{LLI}$). Our results that focus systematically on degradation mechanisms via lifetime simulation of digital-twins significantly expand prior work that was primarily concentrating on quantifying and reducing the degradation of specific cells by probing their usage and charging patterns. Examining various cell chemistries and conditions enables us to take a broader view and determine whether a particular battery pack is appropriate for load-shifting (V2G) services. Our research demonstrates that the decision "to V2G or not to V2G" can be made by merely estimating the portion of capacity deterioration caused by calendar aging. Specifically, TvD is primarily influenced by the chemistry of cells and the environmental temperature where the car is parked, while the usage intensity and charging patterns of EVs play a lesser role.

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arXiv2024

Differential Voltage Analysis and Patterns in Parallel-Connected Pairs of Imbalanced Cells

Diagnosing imbalances in capacity and resistance within parallel-connected cells in battery packs is critical for battery management and fault detection, but it is challenging given that individual currents flowing into each cell are often unmeasured. This work introduces a novel method useful for identifying imbalances in capacity and resistance within a pair of parallel-connected cells using only voltage and current measurements from the pair. Our method utilizes differential voltage analysis (DVA) when the pair is under constant current discharge and demonstrates that features of the pair's differential voltage curve (dV/dQ), namely its mid-to-high SOC dV/dQ peak's height and skewness, are sensitive to imbalances in capacity and resistance. We analyze and explain how and why these dV/dQ peak shape features change in response to these imbalances, highlighting that the underlying current imbalance dynamics resulting from these imbalances contribute to these changes. Ultimately, we demonstrate that dV/dQ peak shape features can identify the product of capacity imbalance and resistance imbalance, but cannot uniquely identify the imbalances. This work lays the groundwork for identifying imbalances in capacity and resistance in parallel-connected cell groups in battery packs, where commonly only a single current sensor is placed for each parallel cell group.

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arXiv2023

Current imbalance in dissimilar parallel-connected batteries and the fate of degradation convergence

This paper proposes an analytical framework describing how initial capacity and resistance variability in parallel-connected battery cells may inflict additional variability or reduce variability while the cells age. We derive closed-form equations for current and SOC imbalance dynamics within a charge or discharge cycle. These dynamics are represented by a first-order equivalent circuit model and validated against experimental data. To demonstrate how current and SOC imbalance leads to cell degradation, we developed a successive update scheme in which the inter-cycle imbalance dynamics update the intra-cycle degradation dynamics, and vice versa. Using this framework, we demonstrate that current imbalance can cause convergent degradation trajectories, consistent with previous reports. However, we also demonstrate that different degradation assumptions, such as those associated with SOC imbalance, may cause divergent degradation. We finally highlight the role of different cell chemistries, including different OCV function nonlinearities, on system behavior, and derive analytical bounds on the SOC imbalance using Lyapunov analysis.

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arXiv2023

Modeling battery formation: boosted SEI growth, multi-species reactions, and irreversible expansion

This work proposes a semi-empirical model for the SEI growth process during the early stages of lithium-ion battery formation cycling and aging. By combining a full-cell model which tracks half-cell equilibrium potentials, a zero-dimensional model of SEI growth kinetics, and a semi-empirical description of cell thickness expansion, the resulting model replicated experimental trends measured on a 2.5 Ah pouch cell, including the calculated first-cycle efficiency, measured cell thickness changes, and electrolyte reduction peaks during the first charge dQ/dV signal. This work also introduces an SEI growth boosting formalism that enables a unified description of SEI growth during both cycling and aging. This feature can enable future applications for modeling path-dependent aging over a cell's life. The model further provides a homogenized representation of multiple SEI reactions enabling the study of both solvent and additive consumption during formation. This work bridges the gap between electrochemical descriptions of SEI growth and applications towards improving industrial battery manufacturing process control where battery formation is an essential but time-consuming final step. We envision that the formation model can be used to predict the impact of formation protocols and electrolyte systems on SEI passivation and resulting battery lifetime.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Differential voltage analysis for battery manufacturing process control

Voltage-based battery metrics are ubiquitous and essential in battery manufacturing diagnostics. They enable electrochemical "fingerprinting" of batteries at the end of the manufacturing line and are naturally scalable, since voltage data is already collected as part of the formation process which is the last step in battery manufacturing. Yet, despite their prevalence, interpretations of voltage-based metrics are often ambiguous and require expert judgment. In this work, we present a method for collecting and analyzing full cell near-equilibrium voltage curves for end-of-line manufacturing process control. The method builds on existing literature on differential voltage analysis (DVA or dV/dQ) by expanding the method formalism through the lens of reproducibility, interpretability, and automation. Our model revisions introduce several new derived metrics relevant to manufacturing process control, including lithium consumed during formation and the practical negative-to-positive ratio, which complement standard metrics such as positive and negative electrode capacities. To facilitate method reproducibility, we reformulate the model to account for the "inaccessible lithium problem" which quantifies the numerical differences between modeled versus true values for electrode capacities and stoichiometries. We finally outline key data collection considerations, including C-rate and charging direction for both full cell and half cell datasets, which may impact method reproducibility. This work highlights the opportunities for leveraging voltage-based electrochemical metrics for online battery manufacturing process control.

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arXiv2022

Lite-Sparse Hierarchical Partial Power Processing for Second-Use Battery Energy Storage Systems

The explosive growth of electric vehicles (EVs) is leading to a surge in retired EV batteries, which are typically recycled despite having nearly 80% available capacity. Repurposing automotive batteries for second-use battery energy storage systems (2-BESS) has both economical and environmental benefits. The challenge with second-use batteries is the heterogeneity in their state of health. This paper introduces a new strategy to optimize 2-BESS performance despite the heterogeneity of individual batteries while reducing the cost of power conversion. In this paper, the statistical distribution of the power heterogeneity in the supply of batteries is used to optimize the choice of power converters and design the power flow within the battery energy storage system (BESS) to optimize power capability. By leveraging a new lite-sparse hierarchical partial power processing (LS-HiPPP) approach, we study how a hierarchy in partial power processing (PPP) partitions power converters to significantly reduce converter ratings, process less power to achieve high system efficiency with lower cost (lower efficiency) converters, and take advantage of economies of scale by requiring only a minimal number of sets of identical converters. Our results demonstrate that LS-HiPPP architectures offer the best tradeoff between battery utilization and converter cost and have higher system efficiency than conventional partial power processing (C-PPP) in all cases.

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arXiv2022

Predicting the impact of formation protocols on battery lifetime immediately after manufacturing

Increasing the speed of battery formation can significantly lower lithium-ion battery manufacturing costs. However, adopting faster formation protocols in practical manufacturing settings is challenging due to a lack of inexpensive, rapid diagnostic signals that can inform possible impacts to long-term battery lifetime. This work identifies the cell resistance measured at low states of charge as an early-life diagnostic feature for screening new formation protocols. We show that this signal correlates to cycle life and improves the accuracy of data-driven battery lifetime prediction models. The signal is obtainable at the end of the manufacturing line, takes seconds to acquire, and does not require specialized test equipment. We explore a physical connection between this resistance signal and the quantity of lithium consumed during formation, suggesting that the signal may be broadly applicable for evaluating any manufacturing process change that could impact the total lithium consumed during formation.

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arXiv2022

Comparing Power Processing System Approaches in Second-Use Battery Energy Buffering for Electric Vehicle Charging

The heterogeneity in pack voltages and capacity of aged packs limits the performance and economic viability of second-use battery energy storage systems (2-BESS) due to issues of reliability and available energy. Overcoming these limitations could enable extended use of batteries and improve the environmental impacts of electric vehicles by reducing the number of batteries produced. This paper compares Lite-Sparse Hierarchical Partial Power Processing (LS-HiPPP), a new method for power processing in 2-BESS, to conventional power processing architectures using a stochastic EV charging plaza model. This method for performance evaluation allows a fair comparison among power processing architectures for 2-BESS. Results show that LS-HiPPP increases the battery energy utilization to 94% as compared to 78% for conventional partial power processing (C-PPP) and 23% for full power processing. These results were obtained with 25% heterogeneity in individual battery capacities and 20% power processing within the 2-BESS. Derating and captured value are two derived performance metrics for comparing LS-HiPPP and C-PPP in this work. The derating for LS-HiPPP is 84.3% in comparison to 63.1% for C-PPP. The captured value for LS-HiPPP is 79.8% versus 51% for C-PPP.

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