Electro-thermal Control of Modular Battery using Model Predictive Control with Control Projections

This paper proposes a novel model predictive control algorithm to achieve voltage regulation and simultaneous thermal and SOC balancing of a modular battery using limited future load information. The modular battery is based on multilevel converter (MLC), which provides a large redundancy in voltage synthesis and extra degree-of-freedom in control. The proposed algorithm is based on orthogonal decomposition of controller into two components, one for voltage control and the other for balancing control. The voltage control decisions are made using a simple minimum norm problem whereas the balancing control decisions are made in two stages. The first stage computes a balancing control policy based on an unconstrained LQ problem and the second stage enforces constraint on control actions via projection on a time-varying control constraint polytope. The control algorithm shows promising performance in a simulation study of a four cell modular battery. The performance and the simplicity of the control algorithm make it attractive for real-time implementation in large battery packs.