Proceedings of the American Control Conference

Arlington, VA June 25-27, 2001

Battery State-of-Charge Estimation

Shuo Pang, Jay Farrell, Jie Du, and Matthew Barth
Electrical Engineering, University of California, Riverside

Abstract racy of the battery SOC estimate. If this estimate is

This paper discusses the problem of lead acid bat-
tery state-of-charge (SOC) estimation for (hybrid) elec-
tric vehicles. The problem is to accurately estimate the
remaining battery capacity for both driver notification
and automated energy management. The article con-
tains a review of the problem, existing solution methods,
presentation of a new sohtion method, and experimen-
tal analysis of the performance of that method.
1 Introduction
Drivers of internal combustion engine driven cars are
accustomed to checking a gas gauge to estimate the
amount of driving for which their vehicle is currently ca-
pable. Measurement of the remaining gasoline available
is a fairly simple problem solved by measuring the level
of fluid in the tank. Electric or hybrid electric vehicles
use batteries for energy storage. The electric-only driv-
ing range is determined predominantly by the battery
SOC. It is therefore necessary to have methods capa-
ble of accurately estimating battery SOC for EV driver
notification and for HEVl battery SOC management to
succeed. In fact, [5] claims that Research leading to the
determination of an optimum battery pack management
strategy is probably the single most important techni-
cal issue in the successful commercialization of EVs.
Accurate SOC determination is a critical component of
battery pack management.
The HEV energy management application is the
problem motivating this article. In contrast to the EV
application which involves primarily battery discharge,
the HEV application may involve repeated charge dis-
charge cycles. This distinction is critical. In EV ap-
plications, complete stationary recharge allows the SOC
estimation algorithm to be reset to an accurate initial
condition; therefore, estimation errors do not accumu-
late over multiple discharge/recharge cycles. A primary
goal of HEVs is to attain long vehicle range by allowing
the batteries to be recharged while in motion. Proper
operation of the energy manager depends on the accu-
An HEV has an auxiliary power unit (e.g., an internal com-
bustion engine) capable of either charging the batteries or provid-
ing traction power. The onboard energy management system at-
tempts to optimize the use of the vehicles available energy sources
(e.g.lbattery or fuel) to driver satisfaction while minimiz-
ing total fuel usage and emissions.
inaccurate, the battery pack may either be over-charged
or depleted to the point that some cells are driven into
reverse polarity. HEV SOC estimation is more difficult
than the EV application, since the HEV SOC estimation
problem can allow errors to accumulate over numerous
discharge/recharge cycles before a full recharge resets
the SOC estimate to an accurate initial condition.
SOC estimation for lead acid batteries is discussed
for stationary applications in [l,6 , 141 and for traction
applications in [2, 3, 41. There are five categories of
methods for estimating SOC: electrolyte specific gravity,
stabilized float current, coulometric measurement, open
circuit battery voltage, and loaded battery voltage.
The first two approaches are discussed in IEEE Std.
450 [l]and compared in [SI. The conclusion of [6] is
that under float charging conditions, the Aoat current is
a more accurate and rapid indicator of battery SOC than
specific gravity. The specific gravity method is based on
the fact that the electrolyte specific gravity, which is a
function of amount of acid in the electrolyte, is linearly
related to the remaining battery capacity (See Figure
3 in [3]). In stationary applications, specific gravity is
measured via a hydrometer. A long rest period is re-
quired after discharge/charge before specific gravity can
be accurately measured due to electrolyte diffusion dy-
namics. ManuaI measurement of specific gravity is not
feasible for mobile (traction) applications nor for sealed
lead acid batteries. The stabilized float current method
relies on the fact that at the conclusion of fully recharg-
ing a battery, when the battery is held at a constant
float voltage the charging current will stabilize (i.e., no
significant change for three hours). The float current
method is obviously not practical for real-time estima-
tion of SOC in mobile applications.
Section 2.1 reviews lead acid battery chemistry as
it relates to the problem of in-vehicle SOC estimation.
Subsequent sections present and analyze various existing
and new methods for in-vehicle SOC estimation that
rely on coulometric, open circuit battery voltage, and
loaded battery voltage methods.
2 B a t t e r y Models
This section presents an overview of battery chemical
processes and electrical models. More detailed discus-
sions can be found, for example, in [lo].

0-7803-6495-3/01/$10.00 0 2001 AACC 1644

2.1 Chemical Model ([5, 6, 10, 121)
The ionization and discharge processes for a lead acid
battery are summarized in [5, lo]. A fully charged lead
acid battery consists of a lead dioxide positive plate, a
lead metallic plate, and a sulfuric acid electrolyte solu-
tion. Ionization of the electrolytic solution and the pos-
itive plate results in sulfate ions, hydrogen ions, hydrox-
ide ions, and tetravalent lead ions. When a current car-
rying path exist (either internally or externally) between
the positive and negative plates, electrons flow from the
negative plates to the positive plates through the current
path. An ideal fully discharged battery would consist of
a water solution and electrodes converted to lead sul-
fate. An actual reaction may not proceed to this ideal
completion if either electrode or the electrolyte becomes
deficient in (usable) active material.
For the electrode reactions to continue, the sulfate
ions must be able to diffuse into the active portions of
the porous electrodes. If the current drawn from the
battery is greater than the diffusion rate, the cell termi-
nal voltage will drop. According to [SI,the cell voltage is
given by E = 1.87+.0291og (--) wheren0(JW2)
and 7~,(Pb+~) are the number of divalent and tetravalent
lead ions available for reaction. When the current drawn
from the battery decreases, and sulfate diffusion supplies
additional sulfate ions for reaction, the cell voltage will
again increase. This diffusion process explains voltage
curves such as that shown in Fig. 4, where the terminal
voltage slowly increases after the terminal current goes
to zero.
Although batteries are energy storage devices,
batteries are rated by current capacity in Amp-
Hrs, which after unit conversion is equivalent to
Coulombs. Theoretically, the current capacity is
Q, = min ( 2 * n,(Pb), 2 * n,(PbO2), no(H2S04)) where
n o ( X ) indicates the number of X ions in the fully
charged battery, which is nominally known by the sys-
tem design. The actual integrated current that can be
removed from the battery will never exceed Qc. The
percentage of Qe that is achieved b. any application
is dependent on such factors as the load current and
operating temperature. This dependence on operating
conditions complicates the use of Qc for SOC determi-
nation, see Section 3.1.
Let E, denote the energy capacity of the battery and
E,.($) denote the energy stored in the battery at time t.
Then,
t
Ec = J_, vO(T)id(T)dT 4- Er(t)-
The percentage remaining energy (PE,) is
Under the assumption that the battery terminal voltage
1645
Figure 1: Resistive Thevenin equivalent circuit model
is constant, the tradition definition of state-of-charge
(SOC)
results, where the battery has been assumed to be fully
charged (SOC = 100%) at t = 0. Estimation of SOC
by means of eqn. (l),referred to as the Coulombic ap-
proach, is discussed Section 3.1.
2.2 Electrical Models [ll,121
Circuit models of varying complexity have been de-
veloped for the lead acid battery. A resistive Thevenin
model, see Fig. 1, is derived in [12] under the assump-
tions that (1) the electrodes are made of porous materi-
als, (2) the electrolytic resistance is constant throughout
discharge, (3) the discharge occurs at constant current,
and (4) polarization is a linear function of the active
material current density. Based on empirical data, [12]
determines the following per cell parameters for a lead
acid battery:
v,= 2.0030 Volts, Rd = (-& - 0.0150) R.
(2)
For the batteries used in the experiments in [12], Qc =
58.31 Amp-hrs. Based on the circuit in Figure 1, the
discharge loop equation is
& = vo - ibRd. (3)
With Vo held constant at 2.003 V, the terminal volt-
age V, based on eqn. (3) is portrayed in Fig. 2 as a
function of integrated battery discharge current for var-
ious battery discharge currents. Note that, even with
this simple resistive Thevenin model, the amount of in-
tegrated current drawn from the battery before the cell
terminal voltage reaches any specified level is a function
of the rate of discharge.
Since [12] is concerned only with discharge, R, is not
defined therein. In a real battery, the open circuit steady
state voltage V, is dependent on SOC. This relationship
is approximately linear, which motivates open-circuit
SOC estimation methods when the open circuit voltage
is known. The resistance parameters Rd and R, model
all forms of energy loss (e.g., gassing), not necessarily
just electrical losses.

Figure 2: Battery output voltage from Eqn. (2) versus
integrated battery current for battery discharge
currents of 0.1, 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 amps.
The model of [12] is not dynamic, but derived based
on the assumption of a constant discharge current. The
non-dynamic nature of the model implies that the model
will not be able to account for such effects as the capaci-
tive diffusion dynamics under the transient current con-
ditions expected in (H)EV applications. Models suit-
able for (H)EV applications have been considered in
[4,9, 11, 131.
Two dynamic models are presented in [ll].The sim-
pler of the two models is portrayed in Fig. 3. Based on
the circuit schematic of Fig. 3, the circuit equations for
charge and discharge are
where it, = 9. In the special case where Rb = 0,
V, = Vt and the battery current is determined by the
load. The nominal value of the polarization capacitance
C is 40 F [ll].The capacitance parameter also does not
necessarily represent purely electrical processes. For ex-
ample, a portion of the effective capacitance is due to
the chemical diffusion within the battery. The resis-
tance and capacitance parameters are dependent on the
temperature, SOC, and device design.
Based on the circuit model of Fig. 3, under no load
conditions (i.e., i b = o), & = v, both of which con-
Figure 3: &active Battery Circuit Model ([ll, 131)
1646
verge exponentially toward V, with a time constant de-
termined by RdC (when previously being discharged).
2.3 SOC versus Open Circuit Voltage
The steady-state open circuit voltage U,, is known to
be a function of temperature and approximately linearly
related to remaining SOC (see Fig. 3 in [3]). Based on
battery data, it is possible to estimate parameters a and
b such that
+
voc(t) = a S ( t ) b (6)
-b
S(t) = - (7)
where woc(t) is the open circuit battery pack voltage
and S(t) is the percentage remaining battery SOC. For
the battery pack being considered herein, a full battery
pack (S = 100%) corresponds to a voltage of 330 volts.
And, an empty battery pack (S = 0%) corresponds to a
voltage of 270 volts. Therefore,
a = .6- % SOC a n d b = 2 7 0 V .
Based on eqn. (7), there has been interest inusing
U,, to calculate SOC. For example, during periods of
no load, the SOC can be calculated via eqn. . (7) and
the measured U,,. The difficulty in using eqn. (7) to
calculate the estimated SOC during vehicle operation is
in determining the battery open circuit voltage. The
new method of this article, which estimates U,, even
under loaded conditions is presented in Section 4.
3 SOC Estimation Methods
This section reviews and analyzes the performance
of two existing SOC estimation methods. In a battery
stack, each individual cell can have a distinct SOC. Id+
ally, the SOC of each cell would be monitored and con-
trolled individually; however, this is usually not practi-
cal or cost effective. The methods described in the fol-
lowing sections can be applied to either individual cells
or stacks of cells. For simplicity, we will not distinguish
between the two cases, but will generically use the term .
batteries.
The introduction mentioned five categories of meth-
ods for estimating SOC. Electrolyte specific gravity and
stabilized float current methods were discussed in the
introduction and stated to be inappropriate for HEV
applications. The coulometric measurement and a new
loaded battery voltage estimation approach are dis-
cussed in the following.
3.1 Integrated Current
Theoretically, Qc is limited by the amount of active
material in the electrolyte and electrodes. Standard test
procedures for experimentally determining Qc axe spec-
ified for example in [l].Knowledge of the specified cur-
rent capacity, Qc, motivates the following simple SOC
estimation algorithm.
Define the integrated battery discharge current,

Qi(t) = ib(T)dT. (9)

0

The percentage remaining SOC is calculated as nnm.mh

SOC(t) = 100 ( Qc
).
-QcQ i ( t )

where SOC = 100% means the battery pack is full.

Although this method is straightforward to imple-
ment, it has a few practical drawbacks. First, it re-
quires that the initial SOC be known. Any error in
the initial value is reflected in all subsequent SOC val-
ues. Second, this algorithm assumes that the current
capacity is a known fixed quantity. More realistically,
the (usable) current capacity is time variant and depen-
dent upon the current profile and temperature. Experi-
ence has shown that the rated current capacity is rarely
achieved in (H)EV applications [5].
Any problems experienced with this method in EV
applications will be compounded in HEV applications.
EV applications typically involve partial discharges fol-
lowed by complete recharging. Recharging occurs in
a stationary mode, so that the reliable float current
method [l]of determining 100% SOC can be used. In
addition, a float current condition can be maintained for
sufficienttime to at least partially rebalance the battery
pack. In HEVs, several discharge/charge cycles may oc-
cur before an opportunity for stationary recharge and
balancing arises. During the on road discharge/charge
cycles, the energy management system will be schedul-
ing APU usage (for recharging) based on the estimated
SOC. During discharge, the integrated current method
overestimates the remaining current capacity. During
charging, the integrated current method overestimates
the recovered current capacity, since some of the battery
charging current goes to processes such as electrolysis of
water instead of battery recharging. Therefore, over nu-
merous discharge/charge cycles without resetting, an en-
ergy management system that relied on integrated cur-
rent to determine SOC would have a growing disparity
between the calculated and actual battery SOC.
Fig. 4 presents an example of the use of the current
integration approach. The top graph depicts the cal-
culated SOC based on the integrated current, assuming
that the initial SOC is 100%. The center graph shows
the ib(t). The lower graph shows V,(t). Note that al-
though the battery pack performance is deteriorating
by about 17 minutes and performance is significantly
affected by 30 minutes, the calculated SOC is still high.
Even when the battery pack is dead at 60 minutes, the
Figure 4: Top - SOC estimate determined by current inte-
gration; Middle - Battery terminal current; Bot-
tom - Battery terminal voltage.
calculated SOC is approximately 50%. These calcula-
tions used the manufacturers stated current capacity of
38 Amp-Hrs for Q c .
Note that the current integration approach is open
loop in the sense that the battery performance, as deter-
mined by V,, does not affect the estimated SOC. Also,
the approach is dependent on the initial value Q(0) and
Qc. Changing Q(0) shifts the entire SOC(t) curve verti-
cally. The value of Qc is time varying and usage depen-
dent. Therefore, it is evident that closed loop methods
that either estimate or adapt to uncertain initial condi-
tions or parameters are required.
4 SOC & Parameter Estimation
This section presents an SOC estimation algorithm
that estimates the battery open circuit voltage, even
during loaded conditions, so that the open circuit volt-
age can be used to estimate SOC.
According to eqn. (4), the dynamic model for the
battery during discharge is
where v, is the state, v b is the measurement, I b is the
c,
input, and Rd, v,, and Rb are model parameters.
The objective of this section is to define an algorithm
to accurately estimate V, so that SOC can be estimated
via eqn. (7). To make the algorithm robust to different
batteries and aging effects, the battery parameters Rd,
Rb, and C will also be estimated. For the purpose of
estimator design, define the estimator state to be 2 1 =
+- 6,
v,, 22 = d c , 23 = $$, 5 4 = and 2 5 = Rb,where

1647
the physical model parameters have been combined in
x2 and 5 3 to yield a simpler model representation. The
physical model parameters can be recovered from the
state estimates according to

1/p=x1 v"=G 23
&=- 54
52
c=- 1
54

For the estimator design, x i , i = 1 , . .., 5 are modeled

&=55.
9:m
m

Y
..'..-I
ZBO

l ~
I,min
1 O W 2 0
lnln
1 O W

Figure 5: Estimates using the Kalman filter approach. a)

as first-order Markov colored noise processes [7]. Due Left - Estimated VO;b) Right - Estimated SOC.
to these states combining several physical parameters,
there time evolution would be correlated. This correla-
tion is neglected for simplicity of implementation. The which can also be written as
resulting model is written in state space as
X(k + 1) = @ ( k ) x ( k )+ Wd(k) (26)
$1 = -2152 + Z 3 - I b X 4 + w1 (13)
where +(k) = @ ( t k + l , t k ) and Wd(k) is a white Gaussian
x2 = a222+w2 (14) sequence that is statistically equivalent through its first
x3 = a353+w3 (15) two moments to
x4 = a424 +w4 (16)
x5 = Q555 + 205 (17) L:b+' *(tk+l, T)W(T)dT. (27)
& = 51 - I b x 5 + U (18)
Let Qd = E{wd(k)wz(k)}. By defining the sampling
where each wi and U are mutually uncorrelated white period to be small relative t o the time constants of the
noise processes. battery, it is valid t o assume that F(t) and Q(t) are ap-
The linearized state equation is proximately constant during the time interval [ t k , t k + l ] .
Therefore,
X(t) = F ( t ) x ( t )+ ~ ( t ) (19)
z ( t ) = H ( t ) x ( t ) v(t) + (20) F(t) 2: F k , Q(t) E Q for t E [tk,tk+i].

r -x2(t) -xl(t) 1 -Ib(t) o 1 Based on this assumption,

where F ( t ) = I o 0 ~ )eFr(t--r)and *(k) = e F k T .

@ ( t ,= (28)
0
0
0
o o
a4

z ( t ) = &(t),and H(t) = [ l o 0 0 - I b ( t ) ] . A discrete time

a "1
5
Based on similar assumptions, we approximate

Qd(k) = *(k)&(k)aT(k)T. (29)

estimator will be implemented with the following tech-
nical assumptions: E{w(t)} = 0 for all t , E{v(ti)} = 0 Therefore, the discrete time state-variable model of the
for all t i , and battery used for the estimator design is

E{w(t)w(T)T} = Q(t)G(t- T ) (21) x(k + 1) +

= @ ( k ) x ( k ) wd(k) (30)
E{v(ti)v(tj)T} = R(ti)Sij (22) z(k) = H ( k ) x ( k ) v(k) + (31)
E{w(t)v(ti)T} = 0. (23) with the process noise covariance matrix defined by (29).
The solution to the state equation (19) is With this model, the standard EKF algorithm [7] is used
to implement the state estimator.
Results of applying this estimation based approach,
X(t) = @(t,t o ) X ( t o ) + 1: @(t,T)W(T)dT (24) t o the voltage and current portrayed in Fig. 4, are shown
in Figs. (5 and 6). The sampling rate of & and l a is
where +(t,T) is the state transition matrix. 6.7 H z . Fig. 5 show the estimated V, and the resulting
To obtain an equivalent discrete time model valid at SOC. The calculated SOC accurately portrays the bat-
the measurement instants, consider t o = t k and t = t k + i tery status after a short ( 5 minute) period during which
in (24), to obtain the initial battery parameter estimates are being cor-
rected. Fig. 6 shows the estimated battery parameters
t&+l
X(tk+l) = +(tk+l,tk)X(tk) +J th
Wk+l,T)W(T)dT
for runs from two Werent sets of initial battery param-
eters. The final conditions of the first run were used as
(25) the initial conditions of the second run. The purpose

1648

0.6
f 0.4
02
J
o: 30 20 P
I-
U) so Bo
Figure 6: Estimated model parameters. a) Top - &; b)
Middle - I&,; c) Bottom - C.
of including two runs is to graphically show the conver-
gence time for each parameter. The convergence time
is determined by Q , R, ~ and
i , the actual data (observ-
ability). Since Rb directly affects the output when the
discharge current is not zero, Ra is quickly estimated.
The parameters C and Rd are less observable and hence
converge more slowly.
5 Conclusion
This article has reviewed the problem of battery SOC
estimation. The article has also presented a new algo-
rithm and demonstrated its application on experimental
data. The experimental data of this article only involves
battery discharge. As additional data sets become avail-
able, future research will also address battery recharge.
The experimental results to date, as shown herein, indi-
cate that the method is very promising. Advantages of
the new algorithm are (1) it accurately estimates SOC
without undesirable increases in SOC when the load
current changes, and (2) it provides estimates of the
battery internal parameters. These estimated parame-
ters yield robustness across aging and different batter-
ies. Additional advantages of the parameter estimation
based SOC algorithm are that the &,a, and Vo pa-
rameters are available or battery monitoring and fault
detection purposes.
Note in Fig. 6 that all three battery parameters ap-
pear to be functions of the battery SOC. This is most
clearly shown in the plot of Rb, which rapidly converges
to the same value for the same SOC. This is also true
across data sets for the experiments that we have run.
This conclusion motivates future research that will at-
tempt to learn these functions, and maintain the esti-
mated functions accuracy as they change with battery
usage. Since Rd and Rb represent inefficiencies in the
1649
discharge and charge process, knowledge of the func-
tional dependence of these inefficiencies on the SOC
would allow the energy management system to identify
the most efficient range of SOC for battery operation.
If successful, this would result in more efficient overall
vehicle operation.
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