Dear Community,
I am new to power electronics and am trying to design an uninterruptible power supply based off of LiFeO4 cells. The functional diagram of the power management system looks like below:
My colleague tells me to use evaluation modules from TI to facilitate the design process, though I can’t seem to find suitable development boards from TI that works with my 12V 25Ah battery. My question is: when are the evaluation modules most useful? (For instance, https://www.ti.com/tool/BQ76PL455EVM) Thanks!
Best,
Yumeka
Evaluation boards, when available, are a very useful tools in the design phase as they bring a known working circuit to your project. Even though the TI eval board part number BQ76PL455EVM as a whole unit is not a good choice for your project, there may be some parts of it that you may find useful. The schematics start on page 61 of the users guide, for web link click here
As John mentions, evaluation boards offer proven implementations of some particular IC, for the purpose of evaluating that device’s function and behavior. Obviously, one would need to choose suitable devices to evaluate; the BQ76xxxx board mentioned is designed for battery systems having between 6 and 16 series cells, making it unsuitable for a nominal 12V battery which would only have 3 or 4. Further, if you’re using a packaged battery where the internal nodes are not accessible, that device would not be usable.
A simpler approach perhaps, would be to look for UPS reference designs; most of the larger IC manufacturers have at least one, so there’s no reason to limit yourself to TI products only. Decide what the design goals are for your project, find a reference design that’s close, and modify as needed to meet your particular goals.
Dear Rick and John,
Thank you so much for your replies.
I have already picked out an evaluation module for my 4S8P battery.
Now my question is: I would like to have an uninterruptible power supply which can charge the batteries using the BQ24617 when there is AC power present and switch to using the battery power only when AC power is lost. I already have a AC/DC power supply but wonder if I should get a “switching power management module” instead of directly powering the load from the batteries which are powered by the AC/DC power supply.
Thanks in advance.
