Low-Cost Configurable Electronic Load for Lithium Ion Batteries Testing

Characterization data are essential to improve state estimation algorithms for lithium-ion batteries. Unfortunately, only bigger companies can afford extensive test campaigns, as they require expensive and specific equipment. A Low-Cost, Open-Design, and highly configurable electronic load for battery testing is proposed in this paper. The developed equipment is able to sink a desired current profile configured by using a host computer Python interface. A preliminary experimental validation of the designed electronic load is performed obtaining promising results. This equipment could help smaller companies and laboratories to perform battery characterization tests and increase the amount of available data for state estimation algorithms improvement. For this reason, it is released as Open Hardware/Software system and is freely available to the research community.