Combined state of charge estimator for electric vehicle battery pack

Ah counting is not a satisfactory method for the estimation of the state of charge (SOC) of a battery, as the initial SOC and coulomb efficiency are difficult to measure. To address this issue, an equivalent coulomb efficiency is defined and a new SOC estimation method, denoted as “KalmanAh”, is proposed. This method uses the Kalman filtering method to correct for the initial value used in the Ah counting method. A Ni/MH battery test, consisting of 8.08 continuous federal urban driving schedule (FUDS) cycles, is carried out to verify the method. The SOC estimation error is 2.5% when compared with the real SOC obtained from a discharge test. This compares favorably with an estimation error of 11.4% when using Ah counting.