Development of a versatile battery simulator for testing power electronics systems across multiple battery chemistries

Abstract

A Battery Emulator (BE) is a real-time hardware platform designed to replicate the electrical behavior of real batteries, thereby facilitating safe, flexible, and cost-effective testing of power electronic systems. Battery emulators are instrumental in accelerating research and development in domains such as Electric Vehicles (EVs), Battery Management Systems (BMS), and Renewable Energy System (RES) integration, by mitigating the safety risks, variability, and financial constraints associated with physical batteries. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a versatile battery simulator integrated with a bidirectional DC-DC converter. The system is capable of accurately emulating both charging and discharging behaviors across multiple battery chemistries. At its core lies an equivalent circuit-based lithium-ion battery model, selected and validated through rigorous simulation studies conducted in MATLAB/Simulink. The developed emulator is designed for seamless integration into both grid connected and standalone configurations, enabling comprehensive evaluation of battery performance under a wide range of operating scenarios. Simulation and experimental validation confirm that the proposed emulator effectively replicates real battery dynamics, positioning it as a valuable tool for modern energy storage research, system development, and testing.