Technology

What's Inside? Batteries & Embedded Protection

Batteries

Valence Technology – Lithium Performance and Safety Redefined.

Lithium Phosphate Battery Technology Offers a High Energy Dense and Intrinsically Abuse Tolerant Solution.

Traditional Lithium Ion Cells. Recent recalls by the US Consumer Protection Commission and recent fires in laptop batteries and cell phone batteries make battery cell selection a critical one. Imagine the devastating results if these fires happened in an automobile!

**Safety is one of the most critical success factors of our products…which is why OEMtek chose lithium phosphate cells from Valence Technology.**

The cornerstone of OEMtek’s BREEZ Solution is our battery pack, which is comprised of rechargeable, high energy density lithium phosphate 18650 battery cells from Valence Technology. The chemistry in these cells has higher discharge current and has higher energy density than factory OEM HEV battery packs. Additionally, these cells are fundamentally more stable and intrinsically more fault tolerant than lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) cells (found commonly in laptops).

Valence batteries are made using a patented phosphate-based cathode material that possesses safety characteristics that are fundamentally superior. Valence’s cell technology demonstrates excellent shelf life, long cycle life and high energy density.

Valence’s batteries possess safety characteristics that are stable in overcharge or short circuit conditions, have the ability to withstand high temperatures without major incident, thus increasing the safety and reliability of our BREEZ Solution.

Embedded Protection Layers

OEMTEK’s core pack technology involves multiple safety systems, both passive and active, that monitors the level of charge and current of the battery cells. The system is controlled by our proprietary smart battery management system (BMS). Logic circuitry and microcontrollers continually monitor voltage, current and temperature within the pack.

  • Battery pack safety and longevity are guaranteed by the use of analog ASIC technology
  • OEMtek ASICs ensure that battery cells are charge balanced and permit monitoring of the battery pack for faults.
  • OEMTEK’s core pack technology involves multiple safety systems, both passive and active, that ensures cells are thermally balanced, and equally charged and discharged during operation.
  • Logic circuitry and microcontrollers continually monitor voltage, current and temperature within the pack
  • If any defined fault conditions are detected, the OEMtek battery pack will be immediately disconnected from the rest of the vehicle to ensure safety.
  • Failure of a few battery cells in the OEMtek battery pack only has a minor impact on the overall battery pack capacity.

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Vehicle Controller

OEMtek’s highly scalable vehicle controller architecture and advanced control algorithms provide a robust, distributed system to communicate and control the vehicles. Our system architecture makes OEMtek’s solutions easily scalable to a variety of vehicle makes and models, and to different battery configurations– in parallel or series, or a combination of both.

  1. OEMtek’s solution provides a highly scalable controller architecture that uses multiple 32 bit ARM processors with a distributed "publish-subscribe" software architecture.
    1. Collaboration among controllers facilitates:
      1. Faster charging
      2. User interface
      3. Data logging to SD/MMC cards
      4. Bluetooth/WiFi access
      5. Battery pack fault monitoring
      6. Implementation of DSP-based control algorithms
  2. OEMtek utilizes a combination of elements to determine our algorithm for the battery state of charge including battery current, electrolyte pH levels, battery voltage, temperature, energy capacity of the pack and our charge/discharge profile. These self tuning control algorithms determine when to transfer the energy stored in the OEMtek battery pack to the vehicle at optimal levels.

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Research & Development

Follow-on Hybrid Vehicle Applications for BREEZ

OEMtek already has plans to scale our technology to other 'full-hybrid' vehicles. We are currently in the R&D and testing phase of our BREEZ Solution for the Ford Escape Hybrid, and will target the following ‘full-hybrid’ vehicles next:
  • Lexus RX400h
  • Toyota Camry
  • Toyota Highlander
  • Mercury Mariner

Climate-Neutral Partners

We are continually seeking climate-neutral partners focused on improving the carbon footprint of our company and our customers. Specifically, partners with renewable energy companies (e.g., solar installation companies) to offer a climate-neutral energy living solution to our customers.

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Vehicle-to-Grid

We aim to provide a full-service solution that offers energy storage, energy management and V2G technology. V2G technology presents great opportunities for distributed energy storage and maximized production efficiencies for electric utility providers. It allows for the bi-directional sharing of electricity between electric-drive vehicles (such as PHEVs), and the electrical power grid. Batteries in electric-drive vehicles can act as an energy storage system, increasing reliability and the amount of renewable energy available to the grid during peak power usage. The key to realizing economic value from V2G is precise timing of its grid power production to fit within driving requirements while meeting the time-critical power "dispatch" of the electric distribution system .

Challenges still remain that need to be addressed prior to full-scale V2G realization, such as a set of regulations and standards on the V2G network, physical hardware (e.g., type, size, mode of plug) and type of interconnect. We will need to partner with the appropriate parties (e.g., electric utilities; vehicle manufactures, regulatory bodies) to facilitate and offer a V2G-enabled system for consumers. Click here for more about V2G.

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