2020 2nd International Conference on Industrial Electrical and Electronics (ICIEE)

Design of Multistage Fast Charging Strategy on

Lead-Acid Batteries
K.G.H Mangunkusumo M. Ridwan P.A.A Pramana
Transmission and Distribution Transmission and Distribution Transmission and Distribution
PLN Research Institute PLN Research Institute PLN Research Institute
Jakarta, Indonesia Jakarta, Indonesia Jakarta, Indonesia
kevin,mangunkusumo@pln.co.id

A.S Habibie
Transmission and Distribution
PLN Research Institute
Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract—Battery management system is very important for will be large if the battery on the depth of discharge and the
maintaining optimum battery performance and lifetime. One charging time will takes longer time.
of the most important part of battery management system is
the battery charging strategy. The conventional fast charging
method combines the advantages and eliminates the disadvantage
of constant current charging and constant voltage charging. In
this experimental study, multistage fast charging strategy based
on development of two-step charging strategy are proposed.
Experimental result shows that multistage and two-step charging
current followed the acceptable current curve and multistage
charging strategy is 138s or 11.73% faster than faster than two-
step charging strategy.
Index Terms—Constant current, constant voltage, fast charging,
multistage, bidirectional, converter

I. I NTRODUCTION
Nowadays, battery is very important as an portable power
sources. Moreover, in renewable energy sources such as wind,
solar, tidal, wave, and biomass which produce power fluctua-
tions, batteries are needed as storage device and provide stable
power sources. Currently the electrical grid cannot tolerate
large and sudden power fluctuations. Therefore, an appropriate
and perfect design of battery management system (BMS) is a
must. One of the most important part of BMS is the charging
method. The charging/discharging cycles of batteries are very
important especially to provide an optimal battery life-time,
which directly correlated with battery charging strategy [1]
[2].
Some charging strategies are explained in literatures [3][4].
The most commonly used charging strategy is the combination
of constant current and constant voltage charging [5]. Constant
current chargers control the voltage applied to the battery
to maintain constant current flow, and switching off when
the battery terminal voltage reaches the maximum allowable
voltage [6]. The concept of fast charging needs to inject a
high constant charging current to the battery [7]. On the other
hands, constant voltage chargers will maintain the voltage
constant with controlling the charge current regardless the
capacity of the battery increase, and the charged current of
the battery decrease exponentially. The initial current charge
Fig. 1. Bidirectional Converter
In this study multistage CC-CV charging is proposed to get
a faster charging method. Detail design including hardware
and software design are explained. The experimental result of
multistage charging strategy will be compared with the two-
step charging strategy to get the crystal clear concept of fast
charging strategy.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the charger design including the hardware design
and the digital signal processing strategy. In Section III, the
two-step charging methods will be explained. In Section IV,
the experimental design and result of the proposed multistage
charging strategy is described. Finally, a conclusion is given
in Section V.
II. CHARGER DESIGN
A. Hardware design
The charger is designed to do battery charging and discharg-
ing in one device. The bidirectional converter is chosen to
fulfill the charger requirement. The bidirectional topologycal
design is shown in Fig. 1. The bidirectional converter is a
buck-boost converter. During charging condition, the converter

978-1-7281-9702-9/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 52

Authorized licensed use limited to: American University of Beirut. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 23:06:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2020 2nd International Conference on Industrial Electrical and Electronics (ICIEE)

is operated as buck converter and during discharging, the con-
verter is operated as boost converter. In this paper, we are focus
on the charging strategy to charge 8 lead-acid battery 12V /
5Ah in series. The battery maximum and minimum standby
voltage are 13V and 11.2V. The maximum and minimum
battery voltages
the constant current block diagram is duty cycle as well. The
duty cycle maintain the output current equal to Iref where Iref
follows the setting value.
There are two algorithms to improve the performance of the
converter. The first is soft start. A big amount of capacitor in
the converter will leads into a big inrush current if a big value
of voltage is suddenly attached. Thus to reduce the transition,
soft start is needed to limit the inrush current. In interval 50ms,
if the duty cycle is below 50%, the duty

Fig. 2. Constant voltage block diagram

Fig. 3. Constant current block diagram

will change for on-load condition, the maximum and mini-

mum battery voltages become 14.4V and 10.5V, respectively.
Bidirectional converter use 2 switching devices (M1 and M2)
as the main components and 2 PWM as the main control
signals. 220Vdc as the power source (Vbus) is converted
into 96V-104Vdc as the charging voltage (Vbat). During this
condition, the converter is buck mode. The controlled signal is
generated by digital signal processor (DSP) in in pulse width
modulation (PWM) form and the component value selection
is based on [8].
III. Digital Signal Processing strategy
PWM is the control signal generated to control the con-
verter. DSP card Picollo F28035 control card with serial
Fig. 4. Close loop buck converter control strategy
communication RS-232 are used un this experiment as the
PWM generator and main processor. The control card is cycle increases with 0.0033 resolution. Otherwise, if the
attached to a docking station which has feaetures on board duty cycle is above 50%, the duty cycle is set to 50%. The
JTAG emulation, accessing all control card signal, breadboard second feature is duty cycle limiter, the duty cycle output of
areas, RS-232, and JTAG. PI control is forced equal to 20% if the duty cycle < 20% and
Fig. 2 shows constant voltage block diagram. Constant equal to 93% if the duty cycle > 93%. Therefore, the output
voltage block diagram is implemented in both buck and boost duty cycle will be limited in the specific value to maintain the
converter to get constant voltage mode. Vref is referred as converter in working duty cycle.
the voltage reference value. Vout for buck converter (charger)
IV. CHARGING STRATEGY
is taken from battery terminal voltage. The value of battery
terminal voltage is read by voltage sensor using simple differ- The acceptable charge current will decrease to the increase
ential amplifiers and then feedback to the ADC pin of DSP. of the battery state of charge (SoC). During lots of experiments
The output of the constant voltage block diagram is a duty and theory analysis, the relationship of maximum acceptable
cycle. The duty cycle maintain the output voltage in 100Vdc charge current and time are described as equation (1).
as the charging voltage. I = I0 e−a (1)
Fig. 3 shows constant current block diagram. Constant
current block diagram is implemented in buck converter to Where, I is the maximum acceptable charge current. Io is the
get constant current charging. Iref is the current reference maximum charge current during the beginning of charging and
value. Iout is taken from the current that flows to the battery. α is the acceptable charge ratio, and it is obtained by dividing
The current value is read by current sensor using LEM LA- the acceptable charge current by the charge capacity.
100P, and the feedback to the ADC pin of DSP. The output of α = I0 /C (2)

53

Authorized licensed use limited to: American University of Beirut. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 23:06:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2020 2nd International Conference on Industrial Electrical and Electronics (ICIEE)
If α is high, the acceptable charge ability will be high. The
US scientist J.A.Mas provided the theory to prolong the
Fig. 5. Two-step charging flowchart
life-span of battery and protect it from separating out gas,
discharging lot quantity of heat, and damage [9]
√
α = K1 / C
For any given discharge current, there is an inverse ratio
between the acceptable charge ratio during charge and the
square root of discharge capacity.
√ method takes 1176s to reaches 0.506A and 110.8V
α = K1 / C (4)
Equation (4), K1 is a constant value of discharge current. C
is the discharge capacity. According to equation (3), capacity
of the battery can be represented by the terminal voltage of
the battery in steady state condition. One cycle is defined by
one charge and one discharge, and within almost the same
battery capacity [6]. Proper charging method is an important
part of battery management system. Battery performance and
service life will be directly dependent on the quality and output
characteristic of the charger [10].
The most commonly used charging strategy is the combina-
tion of constant current and constant voltage charging which
is called the two-step charging. CC mode maintains charging
current at specific value until the battery terminal voltage
reaches the cut-off voltage[11] and then switch into CV mode.
Authorized licensed use limited to: American University of Beirut. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 23:06:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
The CV mode will reduce over charging probability. CV mode
decreases the charge current until the current reaches C / 10A
[11].
Fig. 5 shows flowchart diagram and Fig. 6 and Fig. 7
shows voltage and current waveforms of the two-step charging
method. In CC mode (I), charging current maintains at 1.02A
until the terminal voltage reaches 110.8V. Next, CV mode (II)
decreases the charging current exponentially until
Fig. 6. Two-step charging voltage
Fig. 7. Two-step charging current
(3)
the battery terminal voltage reaches the reference value.
However, the difference between battery voltage and battery
terminal voltage is small. Thus, the charging rate becomes
slow. As shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, the two-step charging
V. MULTISTAGE CHARGING STRATEGY
Multistage CC-CV charging is proposed to satisfy the
acceptable current curve. Fig. 8 shows multistage CC-CV
strategy and this method consist of 5 times CC and CV
as represented by I-II-III-IV-V-VI.During the first CC mode,
the charging current is maintained at 1.02Auntil the battery
terminal voltage reaches 110.8V. 110.8V is set to be the
highest allowable terminal voltage as the reference to switch
into the next charge stage. Then, the program switches to the
second CC (II) and maintains the charging current at 0.92A.
The second CC jump to the third CC (III) when the battery
terminal voltage is 110.8V as well. During the third CC, the
charging current maintained at 0.83A. In the fourth (IV) and
fifth (V) CC mode, the charging currents are maintained at
54
 2020 2nd International Conference on Industrial Electrical and Electronics (ICIEE)
0.66A and 0.57A, respectively. Finally, the program switches
to the CV mode when the V stage battery terminal voltage
is 110.8 V. CV mode then maintains the charging voltage at
110.8V to ensure the battery will fully charge and reduce the
over voltage probability. During CC transition from stage to
stage, the battery terminal voltage will drop due to the decrease
of the charging current, and then increase to the cut-off voltage
(110.8 V) as shown in Fig. 8. Multiple CC strategy makes the
difference between the battery terminal voltage and the battery
voltage at the end of the CC mode much smaller then the two-
step charging method. In CV
Fig. 8. Multistage charging flowchart diagram
mode, multistage charging needs small time to be fully
charge and fulfill the acceptable current curve. Fig. 9 and
Fig. 10 show that multistage charging strategy needs 1038
seconds for the current decreases into 0.5A and the battery
terminal voltage 110.8V.
VI. DISCUSSION
There are two basic charging methods constant voltage
charging and constant current charging. Constant voltage
charging will set the battery terminal voltage into its allowable
maximum on-load voltage and charging current will taper
down to a minimum value inversely proportional with battery
capacity. This charging method takes long time to get battery
fully charge but eliminate the over-voltage probability. Con-
stant current charging vary the battery terminal voltage apply
to the battery to maintain a constant current flow and switching
off when the maximum allowable on-load voltage is reached.
Constant current is fast to reach the targeted voltage but the
voltage will drop in stand-by condition because of the use of
big charging current value. Moreover, the probability of the
battery over-voltage is high. The combination of CC charging
and CV charging will take their advantages and eliminate the
disadvantages of those two charging method. Two-step CC-
CV charging in this experiment study has been done using
55
Authorized licensed use limited to: American University of Beirut. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 23:06:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
the constant current charging at 1.02 A until the terminal
voltage reaches 110.8V. Then, CV mode decrease the charging
current exponentially until the battery terminal voltage reaches
the reference value. The experimental result showed two-step
charging method took 1176s to reaches 0.506A and 110.8V.
The proposed multistage fast charging strategy has been done
in this experiment based on development of two-step charging
method. The multistage charging using 5-step CC before
jump into CV mode. Multistage charging strategy needs 1038
seconds for the current decreases into 0.5A and the battery
terminal voltage reaches 110.8V. Therefore, the
Fig. 9. Multistage charging voltage
Fig. 10. Multistage charging current
experimental result showed that multistage and two-step
charging current followed the acceptable current curve and
multistage charging strategy was 138s or 11.73% faster than
two-step charging strategy.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this study, the detail multistage fast charging strategy
design including hardware and software strategy has been
explained. The proposed multistage fast charging strategy has
been done in this experiment based on development of two-
step charging method. Experimental result showed that mul-
tistage and two-step charging current followed the acceptable
current curve and multistage charging strategy was 138s or
11.73% faster than two-step charging strategy.
R EFERENCES
[1] W. Yan, J. Peng and Q. Xuerong, ”Study of Software V/T Curve Control
Technology Applicable for Battery Charging in Satellite,” Spacecraft
Engineering, pp. 74-78, 2011.
 2020 2nd International Conference on Industrial Electrical and Electronics (ICIEE)

[2] W. Lin, S. Haitao, X. Liu, C. Zhao and L. Fu, ”Multi-step Constant

Current Fast Charging Topology and Principle Simulation for,” in
International Conference on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
Prague, 2017.
[3] T. Huang, R. Peng, T. Tsai, K. H. Chen and C. Wey, ”Fast Charging
and High Efficiency Switching Based Charger With Continuous Built-In
Resistance Detection and Automatic Energy Deliver Control for Portable
Electronics,” Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 49, pp. 1580-1594,
2014.
[4] Y. Liu and Y. Luo, ”Search for an Optimal Rapid-Charging Pattern
for Li-ion Batteries Using Taguchi Approach,” IEEE Transactions on
Industrial Electronics, vol. 57, no. 12, pp. 3963-3971, 2010.
[5] A. Moeini and S. Wang, ”Design of Fast Charging Technique for
Electrical Vehicle Stations with Grid-Tied Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel
Converters,” in Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition,
San Antonio, 2018.
[6] L. Siguang, Z. Chengning and S. Xie, ”Research on Fast Charge Method
for Lead-Acid Electric Vehicle Batteries,” in International Workshop on
Intelligent Systems and Applications, Wuhan, 2009.
[7] D. Aggeler et al, ”Ultra-fast DC-charge infrastructures for EV-mobility
and future smart grids,” in Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Confer-
ence Europe, Gothenburg, 2010.
[8] B. Hauke, ”Basic Calculation of a Buck Converter’s Power Stage,” Texas
Instrument, Texas, 2015.
[9] W. Li Xin and L. Chao, ”Realization of Fast Battery Charge Method for
Lead-Acid Electric Vehicle,” Editoral Board of Electric Machines, vol.
11, no. 4, pp. 29-33, 2007.
[10] ”Valve Regulated Lead-Acid Rechargeable Batteries,” NP Series Appli-
cation Manual
[11] S. Wen, ”Cell Balancing Buys Extra Run Time and Battery Life,” Analog
Applications Journal, pp. 14-18, 2009.

56

Authorized licensed use limited to: American University of Beirut. Downloaded on May 19,2021 at 23:06:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.