Implementation of Coulomb Counting Method for Estimating the State of Charge of Lithium-Ion Battery

An accurate estimate of the state of charge, which describes the remaining percentage of a battery’s capacity, has been an important and ever existing problem since the invention of the electrochemical cell. State of charge estimation is one of the important function of a battery management system which ensures the safe, efficient and reliable operation of a battery. In this paper, the coulomb counting method is implemented for the estimation of the state of charge of lithium-ion battery. The hardware comprises an Arduino based platform for control and data processing, and a 16-bit analog to digital converter for current and voltage measurement. The embedded algorithm initializes with a self-calibration phase, during which the battery capacity, coulombic efficiency and initial state of charge are evaluated. The initial state of charge is determined at the fully charged state (100% state of charge) or the fully discharged state (0% state of charge). The cumulative error of this method was addressed by routine recalibration of the capacity, coulombic efficiency and state of charge at the fully-charged and fully-discharged states. The algorithm was validated by charging/discharging a lithium-ion battery through fifty complete cycles and evaluating the error in the estimated state of charge. The result shows a mean absolute error of 0.35% in the estimated state of charge during the test. Further analysis, considering prolonged battery operation without parameters recalibration, suggests that error in the coulombic efficiency term contributes the most to the increasing error in the estimated state of charge with each cycle.