Methodology for comparative assessment of battery technologies: experimental design, modeling, performance indicators and validation with four technologies

An increasing number of applications with diverse requirements incorporate various battery technologies. Selecting the most suitable battery technology becomes a tedious task as several aspects need to be taken into account. Two of the key aspects are the battery characteristics under temperature variations and their degradation. While numerous contributions using tailored assessment methods to evaluate both aspects for a particular application exist in the literature, a general methodology for analysis is necessary to enable a quantitative comparison between different technologies. We propose in this paper a novel methodology, based on performance indicators, to quantify the potential and limitations of a battery technology for diverse applications sharing a similar operational profile. A quantification of phenomena such as the influence of high and low temperatures on the battery, or the effect of cycling and state of charge on battery aging is obtained. In pursuit of these indicators, an experimental procedure and the fitting of aging model parameters that allow their calculation are proposed. As an additional outcome of this work, a general aging model that allows comprehensive analysis of aging behavior is developed and the trade-off between experimental time and accuracy is analyzed to find an optimal experimental time between 2 and 4 months, depending on the studied battery technology. Finally, the proposed methodology is applied to four battery technologies in order to show its potential in a real case-study.