Second-life battery energy storage systems: converter topology and redundancy selection

Battery energy storage systems have traditionally been manufactured using new batteries with a good reliability. The high cost of such a system has led to investigations of using second-life transportation batteries to provide an alternative energy storage capability. However, the reliability and performance of these batteries is unclear, and multi-modular power electronics with redundancy has been suggested as a means of helping with this issue. This presentation reviews work already undertaken on battery failure rates to suggest suitable figures for use in reliability calculations. The presentation then uses reliability analysis and a numerical example to investigate six different multi-modular topologies and suggests how the number of series battery strings and power-electronic module redundancy should be determined for the lowest hardware cost using a numerical example. The results reveal that the cascaded DC-side modular with a single inverter is the lowest-cost solution for a range of battery failure rates.