Exploiting Electric Drives for Battery Monitoring and Inverter Devices Heat Stress Management in EVs

This paper revises two techniques developed to exploit the monitoring and control capabilities of electric drives for electric vehicles to provide some functions. According to the first approach, a permanent magnet synchronous motor drive is used to generate specific DC bus current profiles enabling the estimation of battery pack parameters and the monitoring of state of charge, whenever the motor is not delivering torque. The second approach deals with thermal management of inverter power devices by utilizing an unbalanced set of phase currents. This technique does not alter the rotating magnetomotive force of the electrical machine, thus ensuring a consistent torque output while optimizing thermal stress on the power devices of the inverter. Both simulations and experimental assessment demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed methods.