Page 26 - EngineerIT April 2022

ELECTRONICS

Balancell homegrown lithium battery

technology keeps the lights on

alancell is an innovative technology business focused on lithium ferro phosphate fully. Balancing the individual cells in the
batteries (LFP) and battery management systems (BMS) with solutions for commercial battery pack allows for the pack to be
Band industrial applications, resulting in smart connected batteries. The company was treated as if it is one cell, which charges
founded in 2009, with its core team coming from Optimal Energy, having worked on South and discharges at the same rate.
Africa’s first electrical car. Balancell won the top start-up at the Swiss SA Tech Innovation With its technology already proven in
Summit and holds 13 international patents and over eight design iterations on its BMS the tough industrial motive market and the
system. The company is based in Ndabeni, Cape Town and has a team of over 30 staff. ever-increasing energy insecurity in South
With its proprietary battery management system and IoT platform, Balancell has turned Africa, the perfect opportunity for Balancell
its batteries into smart connected devices to ensure increased life span and efficiency. to enter the solar storage market in 2022
Balancell uses precise instrumentation and software to analyse data on individual cells in the was provided. Balancell has developed two
battery and displays the relevant information on a live battery dashboard. products specifically for this market - a 10,7
The battery management system has built-in logic that provides multiple layers of kWh and 14,4 kWh lithium ferro phosphate
analogue and digital protection, ensuring the battery is protected from overvoltage, battery, both capable of 100% depth of
undervoltage, deep discharge, short circuit, overtemperature and has an automatic pre- discharge (DOD) at a continuous charge/
charge up to 1000A. The BMS continuously monitors the energy in and out of the battery, discharge rate of 1C.
and to this end the battery management system offers exceptional DC current accuracy, as These batteries are physically robust
well as excellent voltage and time accuracy, which together allow very accurate DC energy and are made with the same design
and charge measurements. The BMS measures battery voltage and current thousands of features as Balancell’s industrial motive
times a second, and then from these it calculates power (W), charge (Ah), and energy (kWh). range, with compressed cells, tensioned
It records all of these parameters on internal storage retainer bars, flexible interlinks and
non-volatile memory, as well as extra insulation. Although used in a
reporting all of them static environment, they have a high
over the GSM network tolerance to vibration, accidental impacts,
to Balancell’s proprietary shocks, rotation or inversion, and
IoT cloud platform. temperature cycling.
The platform dashboard
provides real time battery
information, full battery
history, and offers a
host of online analytics
and smart alerts for
operational value-added
insights, which include
charge time vs run time,
energy usage per hour (kWh/h)
or monthly operating hours.
The battery management system
monitors the entire pack and each individual
cell, providing information about cells that are
damaged, weak or starting to fail, as well as increased battery
temperatures, the rate of discharge and the number of power cycles
that cells have completed. There are also visible and audible warnings
relating to any of these set parameters. The proprietary technology is also able to
extend the useful life of the battery with intelligent cell balancing. Each individual cell
in a battery has slightly different internal resistance levels so when charging or discharging
them with the same amount of current, some will overcharge while others will not charge

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