A crucial piece of the accumulator, the battery segment, was prototyped this last week in the Formula SAE Electric Vehicle shop. The accumulator uses six of these segments in series to power the motor and low voltage electronics. Each segment is designed with a maintenance plug and is fully insulated. Lexane insulation surrounds the terminals of the battery packs, of which there are 8 in each segment.
The clear Lexane insulation ensures that the battery is protected against foreign objects, electrical faults escaping the segment, and insulated against fire and heat. The many numerous wires leaving the segment are crucial to proper implementation of the Battery Management System (BMS). The red and black cables are for temperature sensors located in each of our Energus brank battery packs.
These go to a custom temperature monitoring printed circuit board called TempMon, which converts the voltages to temperatures and sends that data over CAN to the BMS. The orange cables are voltage taps, connected directly to the BMS. These are used for monitoring the voltages in the batteries during normal operation, but also for battery balancing during charging.
