No Arabic abstract
Internal short circuits are a leading cause of battery thermal runaway, and hence a major safety issue for electric vehicles. An internal short circuit with low resistance is called a hard internal short, which causes a high internal current flow that leads to an extremely fast temperature rise, gas generation, cell swelling, and ultimately battery rupture and failure. Thus it is crucial to detect these faults immediately after they get triggered. In large battery packs with many cells in parallel, detecting an internal short circuit event using voltage is difficult due to suppression of the voltage signal from the faulty cell by the other healthy cells connected in parallel. In contrast, analyzing the gas composition in the pack enclosure can provide a robust single cell failure detection method. At elevated temperature, decomposition of the battery materials results in gas generation and cell swelling. The cell structure is designed to rupture at a critical gas pressure and vent the accumulated $CO_2$ gas, in order to prevent explosive forces. In this paper, we extend our previous work by combining the models of cell thermal dynamics, swelling, and $CO_2$ gas generation. In particular, we developed a fast and high confidence level detection method of hard internal short circuit events for a battery pack by measuring cell expansion force and monitoring $CO_2$ concentrations in a pack enclosure.
This paper addresses the use of data-driven evolving techniques applied to fault prognostics. In such problems, accurate predictions of multiple steps ahead are essential for the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation of a given asset. The fault prognostics solutions must be able to model the typical nonlinear behavior of the degradation processes of these assets, and be adaptable to each units particularities. In this context, the Evolving Fuzzy Systems (EFSs) are models capable of representing such behaviors, in addition of being able to deal with non-stationary behavior, also present in these problems. Moreover, a methodology to recursively track the models estimation error is presented as a way to quantify uncertainties that are propagated in the long-term predictions. The well-established NASAs Li-ion batteries data set is used to evaluate the models. The experiments indicate that generic EFSs can take advantage of both historical and stream data to estimate the RUL and its uncertainty.
Faults in photovoltaic (PV) systems can seriously affect the efficiency, energy yield as well as the security of the entire PV plant, if not detected and corrected quickly. Therefore, fault diagnosis of PV arrays is indispensable for improving the reliability, efficiency, productivity and safety of PV power stations. Instead of conventional thresholding methods and artificial intelligent (AI) machine learning approaches, an innovative Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based fault detection approach is proposed in this work. This approach combines the superiority of GMM in modeling stochastic power outputs of PV modules and the flexibility and simplicity of Sandia PV Array Performance Model (SPAM) to accurately detect under-performing modules. Firstly, GMM is proposed to represent the probabilistic distribution functions (PDF) of different PV modules power outputs, and the parameter sets of which are obtained by Expectation Maximization algorithm. Secondly, a simplified explicit expression for output power of PV modules, which highlights the influences of tilt and azimuth angles, is deduced based on the SPAM. Then, an orientation independent vector C is developed to eliminate the probability distribution differences of power outputs caused by varying azimuth angles and tilt angles. Jensen-Shannon (JS) divergence, which captures the differences between probability density of C of each PV module, are generated and used as fault indicators. Simulation data acquired from the original SPAM are used to assess the performance of the proposed approach. Results show that the proposed approach successfully detects faults in PV systems. This work is especially suitable for the PV modules that have different installation parameters such as azimuth angles and tilt angles, and it does not require the use of irradiance or temperature sensors.
Ellipsoids are a common representation for reachability analysis because they are closed under affine maps and allow conservative approximation of Minkowski sums; this enables one to incorporate uncertainty and linearization error in a dynamical system by exapnding the size of the reachable set. Zonotopes, a type of symmetric, convex polytope, are similarly frequently used due to efficient numerical implementation of affine maps and exact Minkowski sums. Both of these representations also enable efficient, convex collision detection for fault detection or formal verification tasks, wherein one checks if the reachable set of a system collides (i.e., intersects) with an unsafe set. However, both representations often result in conservative representations for reachable sets of arbitrary systems, and neither is closed under intersection. Recently, constrained zonotopes and constrained polynomial zonotopes have been shown to overcome some of these conservatism challenges, and are closed under intersection. However, constrained zonotopes can not represent shapes with smooth boundaries such as ellipsoids, and constrained polynomial zonotopes can require solving a non-convex program for collision checking (i.e., fault detection). This paper introduces ellipsotopes, a set representation that is closed under affine maps, Minkowski sums, and intersections. Ellipsotopes combine the advantages of ellipsoids and zonotopes, and enable convex collision checking at the expense of more conservative reachable sets than constrained polynomial zonotopes. The utility of this representation is demonstrated on several examples.
This paper considers the problem of fault detection and localization in active distribution networks using PMUs. The proposed algorithm consists in computing a set of weighted least squares state estimates whose results are used to detect, characterize and localize the occurrence of a fault. Moreover, a criteria to minimize the number of PMUs required to correctly perform the proposed algorithm is defined. Such a criteria, based on system observability conditions, allows the design of an optimization problem to set the positions of PMUs along the grid, in order to get the desired fault localization resolution. The performances of the strategy are tested via simulations on a benchmark distribution system.
The complex nature of lithium-ion battery degradation has led to many machine learning based approaches to health forecasting being proposed in literature. However, machine learning can be computationally intensive. Linear approaches are faster but have previously been too inflexible for successful prognosis. For both techniques, the choice and quality of the inputs is a limiting factor of performance. Piecewise-linear models, combined with automated feature selection, offer a fast and flexible alternative without being as computationally intensive as machine learning. Here, a piecewise-linear approach to battery health forecasting was compared to a Gaussian process regression tool and found to perform equally well. The input feature selection process demonstrated the benefit of limiting the correlation between inputs. Further trials found that the piecewise-linear approach was robust to changing input size and availability of training data.