Future of infrastructure
E-vehicles are supposed to replace a big slice of the cars on our roads in the next years. Electric car battery testing and certification ensure that batteries, cells, chargers, and electrical components for use in e-mobility comply with global safety requirements and perform reliably.
A more sustainable approach to the use of electrical energy is widely spreading out in most sectors, ranging from stationary applications, such as energy storage systems both for domestic and for large plants, to e-vehicles, which are supposed to replace a big slice of the cars on our roads in the next years.
The use of energy in an electric vehicle must necessarily follow strategies different from those considered in combustion engine vehicles, given the different diffusion of the refueling systems which, for the electric vehicles, are the charging stations.
All current and future EV models should be tested for homologation (at both full vehicle and component levels) to ensure safety and conformity.
CESI Group designed specific laboratories to test the different E-mobility aspects.
Battery Cyclers for testing EV cells and battery modules
Test on charging stations
CESI is developing studies and technical/economic models to analyze how cars parked – and especially their batteries, if properly managed – could represent an invaluable “reservoir” in which to pour energy produced in excess during some hours of the day, so that they can return energy back to the electricity grid in case of necessity.
For years, CESI has been committed to the study and test of the best technologies for charging stations infrastructure. CESI/KEMA laboratories can test and verify e-vehicles power components which deal with remarkable current peaks circulating in a system of limited dimensions.
When talking about E-mobility, safety requirements is extremely important;.one of the most striking and easy-to-understand examples may be the water and dust tightness tests on the charging columns. These tests are not conducted in live-circuit, as the risks of electric discharges would be hard to manage.
CESI laboratories are also equipped to evaluate how much stress the charging infrastructure is subjected to. The column is literally 'hammered in', using specific tools, to check its resistance.
Test on storage solutions
Manufacturers focus on quality, safety and efficiency of the elements they produce; it is in this area that electric car battery testing and certification operates, ensuring that batteries, cells, chargers, and electrical components for use in e-mobility comply with global safety requirements and perform reliably.
Over the course of their service life, batteries, and their subsystems such as connections and cooling systems tend to deteriorate. This can result in a loss of battery performances, potentially leading up to a total failure. In addition, batteries in electric and hybrid vehicles come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, weights, and chemical compositions. This makes it essential to carry out EV battery testing to verify durability, safety, and reliability of the components.
Whether Customers are seeking to bring new products to market or consolidating a developed technology, it is essential to be able to carry out non-destructive (pre-)testing of batteries, among which:
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Life cycle tests in conditioned environments
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Functional, climatic, and electromagnetic compatibility testing
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Performance measurements and modelling of new applications, including systems adjacent to the main energy storage system
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Failure investigation of energy storage systems.
CESI Battery Testing Laboratories lie in a context of increasing development, as batteries are more and more used, both in storage and vehicular applications. CESI tests samples of batteries with different technology, using different testing systems, thus gaining increasing experience and knowledge in this field.
The Battery laboratory is equipped with all the necessary instruments to perform battery testing, by guaranteeing a controlled environment, allowing the monitoring of the tests even remotely and providing a database in which to store the records of all the tests for later use and analysis.
Climatic chambers, Cyclers and Data Acquisition Systems, are the main tools available at their laboratories to simulate and reproduce the behavior of battery cells in the real world, where they power the vehicles and the storage plants.
Several climatic chambers, with volumes ranging from 1000 to 2000 liters, are used to create and reproduce the environmental conditions, regulating both temperatures, from -35°C to 180°C, and humidity, from 10 to 98%.
They are equipped with safety devices, to prevent and mitigate risks associated to Lithium battery operation. Climatic chambers have completely independent systems and are user configurable according to the needs.
The laboratories are also equipped with “cyclers”, which impose charge and discharge currents on the batteries. These devices are built following the principle of modularity with independent channels, which can be parallelized to obtain currents even very high, up to 1200 A. The wide range of voltages makes them flexible in terms of possible applications.
Water tightness test on charging column
Dust tightness test on charging column
Automotive EMC tests
Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) disturbances arising from the proximity of other electromagnetic devices could potentially interfere with the proper use and operation of the equipment for automotive. This leads to the most complex communication problems between the vehicle charging system and the station itself, for example.
In their labs, CESI uses anechoic chambers to test components and auxiliaries connected to e-mobility and their interactions. Anechoic chambers offer a controlled and reproducible environment to measure electromagnetic compatibility phenomena, such as the generation of electromagnetic fields by the devices and the effect of these fields on their operation.
Aging model Output – Progressive capacity degradation of a battery module, depending on the operating conditions over its whole life
Figure 2. Aging model Output – Module temperature in relation with SOC profile
Developing of semi-empirical battery aging model
An accurate battery model can provide information about battery behavior, in conjunction with data coming from the working conditions.
Some examples:
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Long term horizon, such as the degradation model of expected life.
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Short term horizon, such as predicting battery performances during the route of the vehicle.
