A Combined State of Charge Estimation Method for Lithium-Ion Batteries Used in a Wide Ambient Temperature Range

Ambient temperature is a significant factor that influences the characteristics of lithium-ion batteries, which can produce adverse effects on state of charge (SOC) estimation. In this paper, an integrated SOC algorithm that combines an advanced ampere-hour counting (Adv Ah) method and multistate open-circuit voltage (multi OCV) method, denoted as “Adv Ah + multi OCV”, is proposed. Ah counting is a simple and general method for estimating SOC. However, the available capacity and coulombic efficiency in this method are influenced by the operating states of batteries, such as temperature and current, thereby causing SOC estimation errors. To address this problem, an enhanced Ah counting method that can alter the available capacity and coulombic efficiency according to temperature is proposed during the SOC calculation. Moreover, the battery SOCs between different temperatures can be mutually converted in accordance with the capacity loss. To compensate for the accumulating errors in Ah counting caused by the low precision of current sensors and lack of accurate initial SOC, the OCV method is used for calibration and as a complement. Given the variation of available capacities at different temperatures, rated/non-rated OCV–SOCs are established to estimate the initial SOCs in accordance with the Ah counting SOCs. Two dynamic tests, namely, constant- and alternated - temperature tests, are employed to verify the combined method at different temperatures. The results indicate that our method can provide effective and accurate SOC estimation at different ambient temperatures.