Launching V8 of the TWAICE battery model

New feature for the virtual battery tester

Battery-powered products such as electric vehicles and energy storage systems are not always in operation. There are always likely to be phases in which the battery is not in use. With our new feature, you can now easily set up simulation studies with a resting phase so that you can test the impact of these resting phases on battery performance and aging.

For example, you could set the cell to rest for 24 hours once a State of Charge of 50% is reached, after which the cycling will resume. This provides the opportunity for simulating a huge number of use cases.

Here are some examples of scenarios that you could simulate:

• For passenger cars: these are unlikely to be in use 24/7. Easily include a rest of, for example, 14 hours in your simulation scenario to simulate the time that a car might spend in the driveway on a weeknight.  
• For bus/commercial vehicle fleets of buses: it may be a standard procedure to charge these vehicles quickly at the end of the day, meaning the vehicles are resting overnight. To simulate this scenario, you could set the cell to rest for 8 hours at 100% State of Charge.
• For energy storage systems: for use cases such as intraday trading, energy storage systems are likely to be in a resting state for a couple of hours or longer. This could be simulated easily with our new feature

More configuration options for the thermal model

Until now, the thermal parameters available for the thermal model were based on specific measurements that, once specified, could no longer be changed. Now, we have added additional parameters so you can simulate different scenarios that require a configurable heat transfer between the cell and the ambient air. This means you can now simulate scenarios where it might be necessary to adapt the heat transfer coefficient, for example because of active air cooling.  

We have also introduced cooling/heating power as an additional model input so that you can test different scenarios with active cooling or heating that go beyond air cooled systems. This means you can estimate early in the battery system development process how much cooling/heating might be needed over a battery’s lifetime, providing initial insights for selecting a cooling or heating system. Likewise, if you already know which cooling system you are going to use, you can adapt the operating strategy to make sure sufficient cooling will be available throughout the battery’s whole lifetime.

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Download our article to learn more about the TWAICE battery simulation model.