Abstract
Battery based energy storage systems find a wide array of applications from electric vehicles to power grids. This paper presents a new circuit topology for cell-to-cell active balancing of their battery packs. Its simple control scheme is developed and presented in detail for online operation. The design is modular and does not require a custom multi-winding transformer, instead, relying on a bidirectional synchronous buck converter and two energy storage elements. Also, only four sensors are necessary to implement its current-control scheme. Simulation is carried out to demonstrate the speed and efficacy of the proposed technique.