Many different battery technologies are available for the applications which need energy storage. New researches are being focused on Lithium-based batteries, since they are becoming the most viable option for portable energy storage applications. As most of the applications need series battery strings to meet voltage requirements, battery imbalance is an important matter to be taken into account, since it leads the individual battery voltages to drift apart over time, and premature cells degradation, safety hazards, and capacity reduction will occur. A large number of battery equalization methods can be found, which present different advantages/disadvantages and are suitable for different applications. The present paper presents a summary, comparison and evaluation of the different active battery equalization methods, providing a table that compares them, which is helpful to select the suitable equalization method depending on the application. By applying the same weight to the different parameters of comparison, switch capacitor and double-tiered switching capacitor have the highest ratio. Cell bypass methods are cheap and cell to cell ones are efficient. Cell to pack, pack to cell and cell to pack to cell methods present a higher cost, size, and control complexity, but relatively low voltage and current stress in high-power applications. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
