Design and Control of Online Battery Energy

Storage System Using Programmable Logic

Controller

Nabil Mohammed(&) and Kumeresan A. Danapalasingam

Department of Control and Mechatronics Engineering, Faculty of Electrical

Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia
nabil.yem@gmail.com, kumeresan@utm.my

Abstract. The integration of online battery energy storage systems (BESS)

with the grid has been used to supply peak demand, improve the stability and
power quality of the gird, and work as a backup during source intermittency at a
watt-hour scale. To ensure high reliability and safe operation of the online
BESS, an efficient control is required. The limitations of the existing controllers
include their incapability to handle high-power rating BESS, short life cycle,
insufficient electromagnetic immunity, and limited numbers of input and output
interfaces. Therefore, in this paper, the programmable logic controller (PLC) is
used to control a 200 kWh BESS to operate as an online back-up for the grid.
Siemens software, (TIA Portal V13) has been used to simulate the BESS with
the proposed control. The PLC programming code is written using
SIMATIC STEP 7, while SIMATIC WinCC is used to build the interfaces of the
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. The results show that
the PLC provides an efficient, easy and reliable control of the BESS.

Keywords: Battery energy storage system
Lithium-ion battery
Online

UPS
PLC
SCADA
HMI

1 Introduction

Systems for converting electrical energy into any other form of energy for storing this
energy and converting back to electrical energy when it is required are called electrical
energy storage systems. The need to store this surplus energy, arises either due to low
electricity demand, or generation from low cost energy sources or from unstable energy
sources, such as wind and solar energy. Thus, this stored power is used when no other
generation means is available, there is high generation cost, or at times of high demand [1].
The process of converting electricity to electrochemical energy and storing it in
rechargeable batteries is called a battery energy storage system (BESS). At the begin-
ning, only a small percentage of electrical energy was stored in the batteries, due to
many limitations, including low energy mass density, low efficiency, and the high cost
of BESS. However, currently, this proportion has increased significantly for two rea-
sons: firstly, the continual fall in the price of batteries. and secondly, the involvement of

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

F. Saeed et al. (eds.), Recent Trends in Information
and Communication Technology, Lecture Notes on Data Engineering
and Communications Technologies 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59427-9_52
 Design and Control of Online Battery Energy Storage System 497

new technologies in improving the batteries’ performance, for example, by increasing

the number of life cycles, depth of discharge (DOD) and energy mass density [2, 3].
Lithium-ion batteries have become an excellent alternative energy storage tech-
nology. They can be utilized for a large energy storage system due to properties such as
fast charging, higher energy density and volumetric power and their long life [4, 5].
Despite all these advantages, batteries are complex electrochemical devices for many
reasons. For example, there are nonlinear relations between various battery parameters
such as voltage and capacity. Moreover, the battery’s characteristics change signifi-
cantly over its life-cycle. due to aging and degradation [6]. Finally, the behavior of the
lithium-ion battery depends on various external and internal and conditions, for
instance, current, voltage, temperature and battery impedance. Therefore, providing an
accurate BMS is one of the most challenging tasks needed to avoid catastrophic failures
of the battery during operating conditions.
Regarding the battery’s characteristics, whatever the types of BESS (either online
or offline BESS), the parameters (e.g. state of charge (SOC)) of every BESS require to
be monitored and controlled to guarantee safe and efficient operating conditions under
different applications. Thus, an effective control approach is needed to control and
monitor the battery pack parameters such as current, voltage, and temperature. Besides
achieving advanced monitoring, such as email alerts, and logging. The controller must
protect each battery individually, and also the battery pack, preventing them from
charging and/or discharging current, or from exceeding their voltage limit, by taking
suitable action: either disconnecting the individual battery immediately or shutting
down the BESS, in the worst case [7].
Since efficient control of the BESS is mandatory, the purpose of this paper is to
propose an accurate control and monitoring approach for a high-power rating online
BESS, to ensure the best use of the Li-ion battery. A 200-kWh online BESS has been
designed. An ultimate control approach is then introduced using a programmable logic
controller (PLC), Siemens PLC S7-1200, to automatically protect the BESS, both in
standby mode with the grid and in discharging mode from non-desired voltage, current,
over- and under-discharging and overheating. Finally, a supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA)/human machine interface (HMI) is used for ease of monitoring
the system. SCADA is also used for simulating the designed online BESS to show the
good performance of the PLC control approach. It allows the SCADA operator to insert
various values, which represent sensor outputs of various measurements, such as
battery pack temperature, DC-bus voltage, current and SOC of batteries. The results
show that the BESS is provided with an efficient, easily-used and reliable control by
using the PLC to protect the lithium-ion battery from certain abnormal operating
conditions: overheating and over- or under-charging.
This paper is constructed as follows: in section two the main steps of designing the
BESS and the PLC control approach are described in detail, while in section three
presents the monitoring and simulation of the BESS using SCADA. Finally, section
four presents the conclusions.
498 N. Mohammed and K.A. Danapalasingam

2 Methodology of Controller Design

Ensuring a continuous supply of the required electricity to the load is the main goal of
the BESS. Therefore, the first stage was to design the online BESS to work in parallel
with the grid. The BESS design process included determining the required battery pack
capacity and other components, such as the rectifier and inverter. To build a complete
and satisfactory online BESS, off the-shelf components such lithium-ion batteries, an
inverter and a rectifier were selected based on the desired BESS capacity. The PLC
control approach was then used to control and protect the battery pack automatically.
Finally, a human machine interface (HMI)/SCADA was built to enable easy monitoring
of the functions of BESS. Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the system.

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the online BESS

2.1 The Online Battery Energy Storage System Design

The design of a BESS totally depends on the desired capacity of the battery pack. Since
this work is not designed based on a certain project with a specific capacity, an online
BESS with a capacity 200 kWh was chosen to achieve the design of a high-power scale
BESS. Generally, designing the BESS can be divided into two steps as described
below.

2.1.1 Determining the Battery Pack Capacity

Based on the kWh capacity of the BESS, the DC-bus voltage, rated capacity of each
battery in the battery pack, number of the parallel strings ðNpÞ, number of batteries in
each series string ðNsÞ, and total required batteries of the online BESS can be obtained
as shown in the following steps:
1. Battery pack capacity Cpack ðkWhÞ
It should be noted that the real battery pack capacity C pack is equal or larger than the
desired BESS capacity Cd , because of the specifications of the selected batteries, such
as DOD and temperature factor Tm . Recently, fully discharged, DOD = 1, lithium-ion
batteries with Tm = 1 are produced.
 Design and Control of Online Battery Energy Storage System 499

d Tm
Cpack ¼ CDOD ¼ 2001
1 ¼ 200 kWh
ð1Þ

2. Battery pack capacity Cpack ðkAhÞ

By choosing the voltage of the DC-bus equal to 48 V, then:

Cpack ðkWhÞ
Cpack ¼ VDCbus ¼ 200
48 ¼ 4:166 kAh
ð2Þ

3. Minimum battery capacity in each series Cbattery ðAhÞ

If the maximum desired number of allowed parallel strings is 14,

Cpack ðAhÞ
Cbattery ¼ NP ¼ 4:166
14 ¼ 297:62 Ah
ð3Þ

then a lithium-ion battery with 300 Ah is selected; the most important specifications of
this battery are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Specifications of lithium-ion battery.

Battery model VN Charge voltage Imax Vmax Vmin . DOD Tm
cut-off cut-off
SB4830 48 (V) 58.4 (V) 300 (A) 64 (V) 40 (V) 1 1

4. Maximum number of batteries in each series string Ns

Ns ¼ VVdcbus
battery
¼ 48
48 ¼ 1 battery ð4Þ

5. Total number of batteries in the BESS Ntotal

Ntotal ¼ Np  Ns ¼ 14  1 ¼ 14 batteries ð5Þ

2.1.2 Selection of Inverter, Rectifier and Sensors

Selection off the-shelf devices, including the inverter, rectifier and sensors, entirely
depends on the battery pack specifications, such as battery capacity, maximum
charging current and the DC-bus voltage (in this design, 300 Ah, 300 A and 48 V,
respectively). For instance, a suitable inverter for the battery pack can be chosen such
as PICOGLF10KW48V240VS, and similarly with the charger and sensor selection
process. Full monitoring of the system parameters is achieved using 31 different sen-
sors, comprising an AC bypass current sensor, a temperature sensor, a DC-bus voltage
sensor, 14 DC current sensors and 14 SOC sensors. All these sensors are selected with
an output range of 0 to 10 volts, corresponding with the input signals. Table 2 shows
the sensors’ input and output signals. From the SCADA interface, different values (0–
10 V) representing the output of these sensors can be inserted by the operator to
validate the performance of the PLC. Further information with details will be explained
500 N. Mohammed and K.A. Danapalasingam

Table 2. Input and output signals of the sensors.

Sensor type Input Input range under safe Output Output range under safe
range operating condition range operation condition
DC-bus 0–100 40 < V < 64 (V) 0–10 4 < V < 6.4 (V)
voltage (V) (V)
Battery 0–300  300 (A) 0–10  10 (V)
current (A) (V)
Temperature 0–100 T < 70 (°C) 0–10 T < 7 (V)
(°C) (V)

in the result and discussion section. A lithium-ion battery with 300 Ah is then selected,
the most important specifications of this battery are shown in Table 1, above.

2.2 PLC Programming

As the BESS components (lithium-ion batteries, rectifier, and inverter) have to perform
their tasks simultaneously, these components are connected to the PLC. Using the PLC
control approach brings many advantages, including low power consumption, high
reliability, and high immunity from interference. Therefore, this approach is used in a
wide range of applications in the control system field. A centralized architecture using
one PLC, Siemens PLC S7-1200 CPU 1215C DC/DC/DC, is used to control the
designed online BESS automatically. This control approach has many advantages, such
as lower cost, convenience of installation, ease of troubleshooting or repair, and
compactness.
Sematic Step 7 software was used for writing the programming code in c. The
sequence of the PLC algorithm execution is shown in Fig. 2. At the beginning, all the
BESS parameters are monitored by acquiring the output data of 31 sensors, which
include AC bypass current (Iac), DC-bus voltage and battery pack temperature. PLC
will shut down the online BESS immediately if the temperature exceeds the maximum
temperature (70 °C) or the DC-bus voltage is out of the safe operating range. Then, the
online BESS will be operated in standby mode, when the load is supplied immediately
from the grid, and the batteries will be charged at the same time. During any incon-
venient interruption of the main power supply, the batteries will be automatically
switched to the discharge mode and supply the load. PLC will guarantee this process,
besides monitoring and protecting the BESS in either in standby or discharging mode.

2.3 Measurement Data and Acquisition Systems

Due to the high-power rating of the BESS (14 lithium-ion batteries with 300 Ah
capacity for each battery) it is difficult to implement the system. Thus, simulation using
SCADA/HMI is used. This simulation has been performed using Siemens software
TIA portal V13. Previously, the basic version of the TIA portal included the Basic Step
7 version and Basic HMI version for programming and monitoring the real system PLC
 Design and Control of Online Battery Energy Storage System 501

Fig. 2. Flow chart of the PLC

and HMI, respectively. However, the updated version, TIA portal V13 service pack 1,
supports simulation of the PLC and HMI [8]. This feature is exploited to simulate the
BESS, which is an integration of two components: the controller PLC S7-1200 CPU
1215 DC/DC/DC and the HMI KTP700 Basic. Moreover, the HMI interfaces were
programmed to allow the operator to insert various values which represent the real
outputs of the 31 sensors, to simulate the whole system.

3 Monitoring and Simulation of the Online BESS

Simulation is performed using SCADA to examine the performance of the proposed

PLC control approach. Based on the operating modes of the online BESS, control and
monitoring of the system are divided into two different cases: BESS under safe
operating conditions and BESS under unsafe operating conditions.

3.1 BESS Under Safe Operating Conditions

A power control screen is used to control the power flow during standby or discharging
mode. This interface provides the SCADA operator with the specifications of the
lithium-ion batteries, including rated capacity, maximum cut-off voltage and minimum
cut-off voltage. If the system is operated in standby mode, all batteries in the BESS will
502 N. Mohammed and K.A. Danapalasingam

be charged. Furthermore, the charging process will be controlled using the PLC to
automatically guarantee the batteries’ protection from overcharging by disconnecting
any fully charged battery. The online BESS will be switched to discharge mode during
the absence of the main power source. Figure 3(a) shows the power control interface in
discharge mode.
The batteries interface, as shown in Fig. 3(b), gives information about charging and
discharging current, power delivery, AC bypass current, DC-bus voltage and battery
pack temperature. Since programming the PLC code is validated by simulation using
SCADA, this interface is used as an input and output interface at the same time, to
monitor and simulate the online BESS, including monitoring each battery individually.
The values of the output of the sensors can be inserted from the SCADA screens.

(a) (b)

(c)

Fig. 3. SCADA interfaces of (a) power control, (b) batteries panel and (c) batteries 1, 2 and 3

In Fig. 3(b), the values of the online BESS sensors (with output 0–10 V) are
initialized from the SCADA interfaces, as follows; the output of the DC-bus voltage
sensor is 4.8 V, which represents a 48 V, the output of the temperature sensor is 5 V
(i.e. 50 °C), while the output of the AC bypass current sensor is 0 V, due to the system
operating in discharge mode. Moreover, the batteries interface includes sub-interface
screens representing the 14 batteries, which are grouped in five sub-screens (Batteries
1, 2 and 3, Batteries 4, 5, and 6, Batteries 7, 8, and 9, Batteries 10, 11, and 12, and
Batteries 13 and 14).
 Design and Control of Online Battery Energy Storage System 503

Each sub-interface of the batteries interface provides the SCADA operator with full
information about the battery charging or discharging current and its current SOC.
Similarly, to the DC-bus and temperature sensors, the output of the batteries current
and SOC sensors can be set at various values (0–10 V) to simulate the BESS. More-
over, SCADA shows the output range of the SOC sensors in percentage, after multi-
plying these values by 10. For example, Fig. 3(c) shows the sub-screen interface of
batteries 1, 2 and 3 in discharging mode, with an output of each battery current sensor
10 V, equivalent to 300 A, and the SOCs of the batteries 1, 2 and 3 are initialized at
15%, 50%, and 80% respectively.

3.2 BESS Under Unsafe Operating Conditions

The main duty of the PLC is to completely fulfill the BESS’s protection requirements.
The online BESS is fully protected from any unsafe operating conditions, such as
charging and discharging current, voltage and overheating. Three cases will cause the
immediate shut-down of the whole battery pack: overheating, over-voltage or
under-voltage of the DC-bus, and when all the batteries in the battery pack are fully
charged or discharged. Figure 4(a) shows the batteries interface after simulating the
overheating case by inserting 7.5 V, which represents the output of the temperature
sensor. Thus, the online BESS has been shut down and the total discharging current has
become 0 A because of the overheating of the battery pack, at 75 °C.

(a) (b)

Fig. 4. SCADA interfaces of the online BESS during unsafe operation conditions: (a) over-
heating of the battery pack; (b) battery 1 is fully discharged

Based on the battery parameters such as maximum charging or discharging of

current and SOC, the PLC is able to provide each battery with an ultimate protection in
case of abnormal operating conditions by disconnecting this battery. For instance, the
PLC activates the switch of the fully discharged battery (battery 1) to disconnect it, so
the discharging current of this battery has become 0 A, as shown in Fig. 4(b).
504 N. Mohammed and K.A. Danapalasingam

4 Conclusion

In this work, the PLC has been used to control an online 200 kWh BESS that serves as
a back-up to ensure a continuous supply for the load. The work started by designing the
BESS in which the kAh capacity of the battery pack was calculated based on the
desired kWh. Based on the design, 14 batteries were selected with a 300 Ah rating. In
addition, the off-the-shelf devices, including the rectifier, inverter and sensors were
selected during BESS design. Siemens TIA Portal V13 software was used to control the
online BESS, in which the PLC S71200 unit was utilized to test the viability of the
programming code. For the monitoring and simulation of the system, SCADA was
exploited to insert various values representing the outputs of the 31 sensors, including
the temperature, DC-bus voltage, current of the 14 batteries, and 14 SOC sensors. The
result shows a good performance of the PLC control approach during the standby
operation mode and the discharging operation mode of the online BESS. The PLC
control effectively handles the operation of the system and provides a fully automated
protection from undesired voltage, current and temperature changes.

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