PARC, a Xerox company based in Palo Alto, California which provides contract R&D services to companies and government, has signed a US$4m contract with the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) under the programme for Advanced Management and Protection of Energy Storage Devices.
PARC, along with project partner LG Chem Power, a US subsidiary of LG Chem, will develop a fibre-optic monitoring system capable of providing detailed information about the internal condition of batteries to allow them to perform better in applications such as EV traction.
“The ability to accurately measure what is going on inside a battery will have immediate benefits for battery size, weight, cost, safety, and reliability,” said Rob McHenry, PARC’s Energy Technology Program Manager. “One of the reasons that EV battery systems are so expensive is that very conservative design and safety approaches are required to compensate for the lack of real-time information about what is happening inside the cells during operation.
“The harsh electrochemical environment and other demanding constraints prevent conventional sensors from working, so we’re left to infer the true conditions inside the batteries through external readings like current and voltage. The uncertainty of these inferences means that batteries must be oversized significantly to guarantee reliability and safety. PARC’s fibre optic sensing system can change that by measuring internal conditions with unprecedented accuracy, allowing designers to more fully use a battery’s true capabilities while simultaneously improving safety.”
Ilan Gur, Program Director, ARPA-E, said, “My hope is that these cutting-edge projects will accelerate the impact of vehicle and grid-scale energy storage in reducing our country’s reliance on imported fuels and improving the safety, security, and economic efficiency of our electricity grid.”
ARPA-E will fund the development and demonstration of a complete battery sensor prototype, including new fibre-optic sensing elements, a design to cost-effectively integrate hair-thin optical fibres into battery cells and packs, a compact optical read-out unit to measure the signals, and the intelligent algorithms that can make sense of the measurements to effectively control the battery.
“The key to this project is the ability to combine the interdisciplinary strengths of several of PARC’s research areas,” says Ajay Raghavan, the principal investigator leading the effort. “We’re doing our own research at PARC on how to build better batteries, so we have a good understanding of the physics. We have a well-established Opto-Electronics Program that has developed an incredibly compact and low-cost read-out unit that eliminates the cost barrier usually associated with fibre optics. That group will also lead the development of the specific fibre optic sensors, which are robust to the harsh internal battery environment. We’ll also build on our long history in Intelligent Automation to develop smart algorithms that interpret signals to accurately estimate the overall state-of-charge, state-of-health, and time to discharge of the battery that an EV driver cares about.”
LG Chem Power, which makes high-power lithium-ion batteries in the US, will work with PARC to develop the system and conduct testing.
