A Highly Versatile Energy/Power Dense Portable Lithium-ion Battery Power Module for Next Generation Energy Storage Systems

Lithium-based batteries are increasingly being used due to their superior energy and power density. An example of this is the current effort to transition the 6T format from the legacy lead-acid chemistry to new Lithium-ion chemistries. Using Lithium-ion batteries is a good start. However, more is needed to ensure safety and versatility. This can be achieved by integrating electronic solutions that are efficient, small, light, easy to use, flexible and automatic enough to make it transparent to the user and the application. We proposed a first of a kind module that represents the next level in versatility and efficiency in Lithium-ion battery power management and control. Advances in multiple fronts from power transistors to recent ideas of power reconfigurability and distributed systems allow us to propose today a system that can be used as a versatile power source that works autonomously or in cooperation with other similar modules to create powerful standalone or large scale energy storage systems. The proposed module takes into account Lithium-ion battery specifics to optimize performance and integrates hardware that regulates the power of the battery in an efficient manner to efficiently and on-the-fly produce controlled DC or AC (inverter) power in a portable modular package.