PEDS 2007

Novel Auxiliary Diagnosis Method for

State-of-Health of Lead-Acid Battery
Yu-Hua Sun*, Hurng-Liahng Jou*, Member, IEEE, Jinn-Chang Wu**

* Department of Electrical Engineering

National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences
415 Jiangong Road, Kaohsiung 80778, Taiwan, Republic of China
* * Department of Microelectronics Engineering
National Kaohsiung Marine University
142 Haijhuan Road, Nanzih District 81143, Taiwan, Republic of China

Abstract--A novel auxiliary diagnosis method for
state-of-health (SOH) of a lead-acid battery unit is proposed
in this paper. This method is based on the concept that the
discharging curve for a health battery unit is smooth,
however, the degradation of battery unit caused by the
internal cell shorts, shorted cells open or the cell reversal will
for general battery [5] and 60% of the initial capacity for
small capacity battery [6]. SOH diagnosis by using the
capacity is the ratio between the nominal capacity of the
present time to the initial time, and it is represented as [7]:
(nominal capacity at present time)
SOH (1)
=

(nominal capacity at initial)

distort the discharging curve. Some experimental results are
carried out to verify the proposed SOH diagnosis method.
The experimental results show that the proposed method has
the expected performance.
Index Terms-- lead-acid battery, state-of-health
I. INTRODUCTION
Lead-acid batteries have been widely used in electric
vehicles [1], stand-alone renewable power generation,
back-up power supplies for communication or computer
related equipment [2] and uninterruptible power supply
(UPS). State-of-health (SOH) of the battery is used to
supply the degradation information of battery to the users.
SOH indicates the ability of the battery to perform well in
the charging, discharging power. If SOH can be estimated
accurately, the users will know the state of the battery and
whether the battery should be replaced or not. The
degradation of battery may be caused by drying out, grid
corrosion, thermal runaway, electrolyte leakage, internal
cell shorts, shorted cells open, interconnected open or cell
reversal [3]. There are many methods that have been
developed to estimate the SOH of a battery. These
methods can be categorized into three types:
(a) capacity
Capacity is the most popular method to indicate the SOH
[4]. In the methods of this type, the life of battery is
defined to be stopped when the capacity of battery is
decreased to approximately 80% of the initial capacity
The work was support by the ABLEREX Electronics
Corporation, Ltd.
(b) coup de fouet
The "coup de fouet" is a phenomenon particular to
lead-acid batteries, which occurs at the beginning of the
discharging. [8] This method involves measuring the
trough voltage (low voltage point) in the "coup de fouet"
region and using in determining the SOH of a battery [9].
(c) impedance techniques
Impedance techniques are based on the principle that the
impedance and the resistance of a valve regulated
lead-acid (VRLA) battery increase as the battery ages and
loses capacity. Various impedance meters have been
claimed to accurately measure the SOH of batteries [10].
The methods [11, 12] combined impedance measurements
and fuzzy logic data analysis to estimate the SOH of the
battery and have been published.
Besides the above methods, SOH monitoring based on
battery voltage, temperature, capacity or internal
impedance was developed [13,14] to obtain accurate
results for estimating the SOH of the battery. However,
there are still no economical methods which can
accurately diagnose SOH of a battery.
In this paper, a novel auxiliary SOH diagnosis
method to detect the degradation of lead-acid battery unit
caused by the internal cell shorts, shorted cells open or the
cell reversal is proposed. The salient feature of the
proposed method is that the health status of the battery is
estimated automatically at the end of each discharge cycle
by measuring the battery voltage and current, and it does
not require any complicated measurement. To verify the
proposed auxiliary SOH diagnosis method, aging

1-4244-0645-5/07/$20.00©2007 IEEE 262

experiments for lead-acid battery are developed. The
experimental results show that the performance of the
proposed method is as expected.
II. PROPOSED SOH DIAGNOSIS METHOD
In a healthy battery, the battery discharging voltage
will be decreased smoothly. The degraded battery cells
may result in internal short circuit [15, 16] or cell reversal
[17], which will result in an unexpected voltage drop of a
battery unit, and when internal short circuit open will
result in the unexpected voltage rise of a battery unit.
Hence, the degradation of battery caused by the internal
cell shorts, shorted cells open or the cell reversal will
distort the discharging curve of a battery unit. The
proposed method is based on the concept that the above
battery degradation phenomena will result in abrupt
change of discharging voltage and discharging power.
However, the battery current variation caused by the load
change will also result in abrupt change of discharging
voltage and discharging power. To avoid the un-corrected
diagnosis caused by using the abrupt change of
discharging voltage or discharging power, the
development of a diagnosis method which can neglect the
curves of discharging voltage and discharging power
distorted by the change of load current (discharging
current) is necessary. Because the proposed method
cannot diagnose all battery degradation phenomena, such
as: dry out or grid corrosion. Hence, the proposed method
is an auxiliary diagnosis method.
The variation of discharging current and power can
be expressed as (2) and (3).
A In+1 I n+1 - In (2)
i\ Pn+l =Pn+l Pn Vn+11 n+l Vnl n
= and ADSOH. The compared data of the ADSOH was
= Vn+1 ( In +Ai In+1 ) -v
VnI n
= (Vn+l Vn) In + Vn+j i\ In+1 (3)
where IEJ1 is the variation of discharge current, I1, is
the discharging current value at n+± th sample, In. is the
discharging current value at nth sample, AP11 is the
variation of discharging power, P+11 is the discharging
power at n+± th sample and P11 is the discharging power at
nth sample. As seen in (3), the variation of discharging
power not only depends on the variation value of
discharging voltage but also the variation value of
discharging current.
As seen in (3), the variation value of discharging
power depends on the variation value of discharging
current. The purpose of this paper is to develop a
diagnosis method that can avoid the effect of discharging
current variation, so that the SOH of battery can be
diagnosed via only the variation value of the discharging
power. The developed auxiliary diagnosis algorithm for
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SOH (ADSOH) of battery at n+1th sample is shown as:
ADSOHn+ = AP.+l - Vn+l Al.+ - (V.,, - VJ) n* tanh (Al n+l )~
= (Vn+1 - Vn)In + Vn+,A 1n+1 - Vn+j A1n+1 - (Vn+1 - Vn) 1n * ~tanh (AI nl
= (Vn+1 -Vn)In -(Vn+1 -Vn)In * tanh(AIn+l ) (4)
where
tanh(I~)= sinh(AIn+)
n+l
e(AIn+l -e(Al)
cosh (AIl ) e(AIn+1 +e (Alnl
Because the absolute value of the tanh(EIl+ ) function
will approach unity when the variation value of
discharging current ( I n ) is obvious. IfEtanh( I
n+1)l is approach to unity, then, ADSOHn+1 will approach
zero. This means that the ADSOH algorithm shown in (4)
can avoid the effect of discharging current variation
although the discharging voltage may be dropped due to
the variation of discharging current caused by the load
change. If the degradation of battery internal cells caused
by the cell shorts, shorted cells open or the cell reversal
appears, the battery voltage will vary immediately. At the
same time, the ADSOH in (4) will be fluctuated evidently,
so that the value of ADSOH can be converted into a SOH
index.
Figure 1 shows the flow chart of the proposed
ADSOH for a battery set. In discharging operation,
measuring devices are employed to measure and retrieve
the data of discharging voltages and currents of the
batteries. The acceptable value of a predetermined sample
period of time can be pre-set. The SOH of battery can be
calculated via the equation ADSOH at the same time.
The data of discharging voltages, currents and
powers of the batteries and ADSOH are stored in the
database. The curves may be drawn by using the data of
discharging voltages, currents and powers of the batteries
converted into a SOH index.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM
An accelerated thermal aging experiment, developed
to evaluate the charging and discharging characteristics of
the lead-acid battery [18], is used to verify the proposed
auxiliary SOH diagnosis method. Figure 2 shows the
experimental system. This experimental system includes
battery charger, thermostat, magnetic contact (MC), and
battery measure system (BMS).
The conditions for battery aging experiments are
defined as follows:
(1) Four independent strings of batteries are used in the
experiment, and each string of batteries consisted of
eight 7-Ah 12-V VRLA battery units connected in a
series. Each battery unit consists of six cells internally
connected in a series.
(2) Experiment environment temperature is 50 °C.
 Take a sample data every 10 sec when battery was
discharged.
Take a sample data every 5 min when battery was
charged.
The final discharging voltage of each battery set is
76.8V.
The discharge load for each battery set is Halogen
Lamp (120V 500W * 3).
The experiment is stopped as the capacity of each
sting of batteries is decreased to approximately 60%
of the initial capacity.
Strat
4
Providing data of discharge voltages and
decreases gradually because the load used in the
experiments is a constant resistance and the discharging
current does not have obvious change. There exists an
abrupt voltage drop of initial discharging at the instant
when the battery is started to discharge. Instead of the
abrupt voltage drop, the gradual decrease of discharging
voltage of the battery appears within the predetermined
sample period of time. Correspondingly, a curve in Figure
3(b) illustrates the discharging voltage of the battery in
relation to a predetermined sample period of time, there
exists an abrupt change of discharging voltage at the
instant when the battery is started to discharge.
stringl cell#3 cycle 5
- 10 -

discharge currents of a battery unit

tm 5
s
Setting an acceptable value of a
predetermined period of time 0 50 100 150 20C0
dischrage time(sec 10)

Calculating ADSOH within the (a)

predetermined period of time stringl ceII#3 cycle 5
- 14 -

Recoding the data of discharge voltages currents

-

1
'powers of the battery unit and ADSOH
10 _

Comparing the data of ADSOH 8

0 P
20 40 60 80 100 12; 0 1 160 180 200
dischrage time(sec 10)
Converting results of the compared data of ADSOH
of the battery unit Into a SOH Index (b)
stringl ceII#3 cycle 5
End :1 60 =
z>140
W120
Fig. 1 The flow chart of the proposed SOH diagnosis method for a C100
battery unit o 80
60
0 50 100 150 200
dischrage time(sec 10)
(c)
2 stringl ceII#3 cycle 5
I
0
-2
4-4

0 50 100 150 200

dischrage time(sec 10)
(d)
Fig. 3 Discharging curve of a battery (string 1, No.3) at 5th cycle (a)
current, (b) voltage, (c) power, (d) ADSOH

Figure 3(c) illustrates the discharging power of the

Fig. 2 Experimental system for a string of batteries
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The data of discharging current, voltage, power, and
ADSOH of the battery (string 1, No.3) at 5th cycle are
shown in Fig.3. The curve of discharging current
battery in relation to a predetermined sample period of
time. Except the starting duration of discharging the
battery, the change of the discharging power will be within
a preferred range and the curve of discharging power is
slight decrease. Figure 3(d) illustrates the ADSOH of the
battery in relation to a predetermined sample period of
time. Except the starting duration of to discharge the
battery, the change of the ADSOH will be within a
preferred range and the curve of discharging power is
slight decrease. Because the abrupt change of discharging

264
current, voltage and power at the instant of initial may be distorted at the instant of load change. To verify
discharging is caused by the "coup de fouet". [8, 9] the effect of load change (discharging current variation),
phenomenon, this is a normal phenomenon for the battery. the following experiment is carried out. In this experiment,
Accordingly, the SOH of the battery can be determined only a battery unit is tested, electronic load is used as the
"health" and no battery should be replaced. variable load and the load current is changed in three steps
Figure 4 shows the data of discharging current, during a discharge cycle..
voltage, power and ADSOH of the battery (string 1, No.3) Figure 5 shows the discharging curve of the battery
at 159f cycle. Figure 4 illustrates the SOH of this battery under discharging current changed from 7A- 14A-21A, the
is worsen. Figure 4(a) shows the curve of discharging evident changes of discharging power and discharging
current does not have obvious change. However, the curve voltage of the battery unit occur at the instant of load
of discharging voltage in Figure 4 (b) is distorted seriously. (discharging current) changes. As seen in Figure 5(b) and
The abrupt drop of battery voltage near 400 and 500 sec 5(c), the discharging curve of the battery voltage and
can be explained as some cells in the battery are shorted, battery power will be distorted at the instant of load
and the voltage rise near 1000 sec can be explained as a change. Figure 5(d) shows the curve of ADSOH which
short cell opens. Figure 4(c) show the curve of discharging will not be affected by the change of discharging current
power. As seen in Figure 4 (c), the curve of discharging However, ADSOH curve will not be changed due to the
power in Figure 4 (c) is also distorted seriously. Figure 4(d) changes of discharging current. Accordingly, the data of
show the curve of the proposed ADSOH. The ADSOH discharging voltage and discharging power cannot be used
curve showed in Fig. 4(d) is seriously fluctuated. This to determine the SOH of the battery due to the fact that it
means that the health of battery is degraded.. is affected by the change of the discharging current, but
the ADSOH can avoid the effect caused by the variable
stringl cell#3 cycle 159
:15 discharging current.
10-
th-ree step discharge
5- ~t25
@ 20
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
U 15
dischrage time(sec 10)
z 10
(a)
stringl ceIl#3 cycle 159 0 100 200 300 400 500
14 -
dischrage time(sec"2)
12 - (a)
10 three step discharge
8- <> 14
65 o 0 12
20 40 60 80 100 120 140
dischrage time(sec 10)
n 10
(b)
stringl cell#3 cycle 159 0 100 200 300 400 500
1o
B: dischrage time(sec 2)
- 160
X 140
(b)
'
120 three step discharge
300
Y 100
IC 80
-
250
a5 60' o 200
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
dischrage time(sec 10) ;n 150

(c) 100 _

stringl ceII#3 cvfcle 159

o
100 200 300 400 504 10
20
dischrage time(sec 2)
10 (c)
0 three step discharge
4
-10
2
-20
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
dischrage time(sec 10) -2
(d) 4
Fig. 4 Discharging curve of a battery (string 1, No.3) at 159th cycle, 0 100 200 300
dischrage time(sec 2)
400 500

(a) current, (b) voltage, (c) power, (d) ADSOH. (d)

F ig.5 Discharging data of a battery at 7A- 14A-2IAthree step discharge
The experimental results of above batteries show that experiment (a) current, (b) voltage, (c) power, (d) ADSOH
they are discharged by a constant resistance. However, the
discharging curve of battery voltage and battery power From the above, it can be concluded that the data of

265
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V. CONCLUSIONS
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