Multi-cell battery front end family for high-cell count/high-voltage systems

Renesas Electronics Corporation has launched a new family of multi-cell full battery front end (BFE) ICs for battery management systems (BMS) developed for the larger, high-voltage battery packs that power e-scooters, high-voltage power tools, energy storage, and other high-voltage equipment. The new ICs offer fast, flexible cell balancing up to 200mA+, a critical function to facilitate fast recharging and high utilisation in large battery packs with hotplug tolerance up to 62V.

“BMS serves as the 'brains' of the battery pack, and the increasing adoption of BMS in UPS and the data centre is spiking demand for high-performance ICs that can support higher voltage and larger cell battery pack sizes,” said Andrew Cowell, vice president, Mobility, Infrastructure and IoT Power Business Division at Renesas. “BFEs are a critical part of BMS, and we’ve built our new RAA489206 and RAA489204 ICs with the performance, flexibility, and integration that make it easier than ever for customers to simplify the design process and create robust, cost-effective battery systems for the growing mobility, UPS backup, energy storage markets.”

Created for higher voltage mobility applications where larger cell count and temperature fluctuations across cells are most probable to lead to cell-to-cell imbalances, the RAA489206 gives full high-side battery protection and monitoring for 4S to 16S cell battery packs. The RAA489204 offers enhanced daisy chain operation with accelerated device-to-device communication and improved diagnostics compared with earlier-generation devices, as well as internal cell balancing options and support for the higher voltages and cell count needed by UPS systems, grid backup, and other energy storage systems.

The new ICs’ high integration eases the design cycle and decreases customers’ system BOM costs significantly, expediting design and BOM selection time from months to weeks. The ICs also offers extensive built-in self-diagnostics, increasing their safety functionality, decreasing firmware workload, and alleviating the design burden for adhering to safety standards. Pin-to-pin compatibility with the company’s previous BFE devices simplifies the design cycle further, providing customers a quick and seamless migration path to the new BFE ICs.