Li-ion Battery Management Systems (BMS)

The Altertek LV-BMS is a general purpose 65V - 16S Battery Management System designed, manufactured and supported in the United Kingdom.  The BMS has been specifically designed to give high levels of functionality that allows the rapid deployment of new designs of energy storage systems without the need for expensive custom BMSs and firmware.
  • Designed & Manufactured in the UK
  • 16S - 65V
  • Fully Configurable
  • CAN Bus Communications
  • Charger & Pre-charge Control
  • 2 x Contactor Drivers
  • 8 x GPIOs
  • Onboard Datalogging

OVERVIEW

The LV-BMS is a part of our Intelligent range of products meaning it incorporates many advanced features as standard that are required for modern complex energy storage systems such as CAN Bus communications, state of charge calculation, state of health calculation, charger control, configurable GPIOs and contactor drivers with pre-charge control.

CONFIGURABILITY

All of Altertek’s Intelligent Battery Management Systems can be configured using our proprietary AlterVU software which is free to all users who have purchased an Altertek Battery Management System. Find out more about AlterVU and how it can decrease the cost and speed of your next project.
AlterVU allows a user to change just about every parameter conceivable of the BMS, allowing the BMS to be completely tailored to the product without hard coding decreasing time to market and overall engineering costs.

EXPANSION

The BMS also has a powered expansion header allowing custom modules to be purchased or developed and easily integrated. The expansion header can support additional features such as (but not limited to):

  • Additional communication protocol connections (RS232, RS485),
  • Solid state switching,
  • Additional temperature measurement points,
  • LAN connections,
  • Bluetooth, Wifi,
  • and many more.

The expansion header can also be expanded upon its-self – up to three times providing further ease of integration into even the most complex of systems.

SECURITY

Security has been built in from the very beginning. The BMS has both hardware and software security features to prevent accidental or malicious changing of the configuration or theft of the data being generated. The BMS has multi level security including:

  • Firmware level password to control access to the configuration and stored data,
  • Hardware level jumpers to prevent remote access to the configuration,
  • Hardware level header pins to allow onsite-service access to the BMS.

If updates need to be made periodically, then a set of header pins are provided that can be connected to a key switch which can be mounted externally on the product. This allows a technician to make configuration changes while the key switch is active, but then once removed, user or remote configuration changes are prevented.

  • UK Designed, Manufactured & Supported
  • Fast to Deploy
  • No hard-coding required
  • Built in Multi Level Security
  • Fully Configurable using AlterVU
  • Lower Engineering Costs

LV BMS Specifications

Launch date: June 2022 - Some technical data may change in the interim

Main Features

Physical Data

Cell Count 3 - 16S

Length 150mm

Balance Curent 130mA (Passive)

Width 70mm

Communications CAN Bus

Depth 15mm

Thermistor Connections 16

Weight ~70g

GPIOs 8 x Configurable

Detailed Technical Information

Electrical Limits

Environmental Limits

String Voltage Range 13V - 65V

Storage Temperature -40ºC to +85ºC

Cell Voltage Range 0 - 5V

Operating Temperature -40ºC to +70ºC

Quiescent Current <15mA

GPIO Data

Communication Data

Quantity of Channels 8

Protocol CAN Bus

Output Type Open Drain

Qty of Receive Channels 11

Max Output Switching Frequency (PWM) 5kHz

Qty of Transmit Channels 30

Max Drain Current 500mA

CAN Bus Speed 125kbps - 1Mbps (Configurable)

Max GPIO Voltage 32V

Cell Balancing

Shunt Current Measurement

Balancing Methodology Passive / Dissipative

Connections for External Current Measurement x 1

Max Balance Current 130mA

External Measurement Type Hall / Shunt

Configurable Balancing Threshold Yes

Temperature Measurement

Additional Connections

Measurement Inputs 16

5V 2 x (100mA Total)

Thermistor Value & Type 10k NTC

12V General 8 x (250mA Total)

Probe Parameters Beta / Steinhart-Hart (Configurable)

12V CAN Bus Auxillary Supplies 2 x (100mA Total)

12V High Power Outputs 2 x (3.8A Max per channel)

Interested in the LV BMS?

Contact us to receive more information about the LV BMS and how it can be used in your next product.

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