Determining both the average temperature and the underlying temperature distribution within a battery system is crucial for system design, control, and operation. Therefore, thermal battery system models, which allow for the calculation of these distributions, are required. In this work, a generic thermal equivalent circuit model for commercial battery modules with passive cooling is introduced.

The model approach can be easily adopted to varying system designs and sizes and is accompanied by a corresponding low-effort characterization process. The validation of the model was performed on both synthetic and measured load profiles from stationary and marine applications.

The results show that the model can represent both the average temperature and the occurring temperature spread (maximum to minimum temperature) with deviations below 1 K. In addition to the introduced full-scale model, further simplifying assumptions were tested in order to reduce the computational effort required by the model.

By comparing the resulting simplified models with the original full-scale model, it can be shown that both reducing the number of simulated cells and assuming electrical homogeneity between the cells in the module offer a reduction in the computation time within one order of magnitude while still retaining a high model accuracy.

Read more details in the published article.