A battery charger and method is disclosed for detecting when a battery has a low state of health while simultaneously charging or maintaining the battery. A battery charger includes a processor; a non-transitory memory device; a power management device to receive an input power and to output a charging current; a pair of electrical conductors to electrically couple with a battery, and a display electrically coupled to the processor. The display being configured to indicate a bad battery indicator when the battery has a low state of health and whether the battery is good to start.

A multi-channel current pulse generator for driving a plurality of loads with unique positive terminals and a shared negative terminal. The pulse generator comprises a pulse control transistor and, for each load, a load capacitor and a charging control transistor. The pulse control transistor allows or blocks current pulses through the loads and has a drain terminal connected to the shared negative terminal, a source terminal connected to ground, and a gate terminal for receiving a load driver control signal. The load capacitors are discharged by current pulses through the corresponding loads. The charging control transistors allow or block charging currents for the corresponding load capacitors. The pulse control transistor is preferably an enhancement mode GaN FET and is chosen to withstand current pulses through a maximum number of loads to be driven simultaneously.

When a plurality of storage batteries is used by connecting them in parallel, since the progress of degradation differs among the storage batteries, a power conversion system includes a degradation information acquisition device for acquiring the degradation information of the storage batteries; a temperature information acquisition device for detecting the temperature information of the storage batteries, and a control device for controlling the storage battery power converter based on the degradation information of the storage batteries by the degradation information acquisition device and the temperature information of the storage batteries by the temperature information acquisition device so that the degradation states of the plurality of the storage batteries can be matched.

A Dielectric Energy Storage System (DESS), a Dielectric Energy Storage System Management System (DESS-MS), and method that stores energy for a wide variety of applications.

A system for supplying adapted power to an electronic device with a reduced level of power consumption when the device is not in use includes a first power supplying module, a control module coupled to the first power supplying module, and an MCU coupled to the control module and coupled to the electronic device. The MCU is configured to switch on the first power supplying module when the first power supplying module is in normal state, the normal state being an AC power supply coupled to the first power supplying module. The MCU detects an instant mode of the electronic device and outputs a first signal to the control module when the electronic device is in a standby mode. The control module is configured to switch off the first power supplying module when the first signal is received. A power supplying method is further provided.

Embodiments of the systems and methods of direct cell attachment for battery cells disclosed herein operate without the protection FETs and the protection IC, thereby enabling the direct attachment of battery cells to the system without compromising safety. A charger IC comprises a switching regulator whose output is used to charge the battery through a pass device. In example embodiments of the disclosed systems and methods of direct cell attachment, a combination of switching FETs and the pass device are used as a protection device instead of the charge and discharge FETs. During normal operation, the pass device may be used to charge the battery using the traditional battery charging profile. Under fault condition, the switching FETs and pass device may be driven appropriately to protect the system.

A charging method and a portable electronic device using the same are provided. The charging method includes following steps: detecting a battery voltage and a charging current of a battery module; determining whether the portable electronic device operates at a constant voltage (CV) charging mode; executing an impedance calculation at the CV charging mode to obtain a first battery voltage corresponding to a first predetermined current and a second battery voltage corresponding to a second predetermined current; calculating a compensation impedance according to the predetermined current and the battery voltages; setting a maximum charging voltage according to the compensation impedance and executing a CV charging to the battery module accordingly; determining whether a current variation of the charging current is larger than a threshold value; re-executing the impedance calculation; updating a setting value of the maximum charging voltage when the current variation is larger than the threshold value.

An adaptive charging protocol (ACP) implemented for fast-charging a rechargeable battery having electrode terminals connected to terminals of a power supply provided to apply time-varying voltages to the electrodes, comprising, before starting a charging operation for the battery, the steps of: detecting the existence of historical data on previous charging operations for the battery; in case of detection, processing the historical data to adjust charging parameters in view of optimizing the charging operation; in absence of detection, electrically testing the battery to get data on variations of the state of charge (SOC) for the battery, in view of building a learning model on the SOC variations to be used for optimizing the charging operation.

In accordance with an embodiment, a bypass charging circuit includes a pair of transistors having current carrying terminals commonly connected to form a node. An input of a comparator is coupled to the node through a switch and to a resistor. Another input terminal of the comparator is coupled for receiving a reference voltage. Optionally, a transistor may be connected to the bypass charging circuit. In accordance with another embodiment a method is provided in which bypass charging transistors are coupled to first input of a comparator in response to closing a switch. A voltage is generated at the first input of the comparator in response to closing the switch and the voltage is compared with a reference voltage. In response to the comparison, a status indicator signal is generated to indicate the presence of a low-impedance failure in one or both of the bypass charging transistors.

This application provides a method and a device for estimating a remaining charging time of a battery, and a battery management system. The method includes: determining a minimum charging time of each type of battery cell at a K.sup.th charging phase based on a charge request current value of each type of battery cell at the K.sup.th charging phase; and determining the remaining charging time of the battery when the K.sup.th charging phase of any type of battery cell in the battery is a target state-of-charge phase, where the remaining charging time of the battery is a smallest one of accumulation values, each accumulation value being an accumulation of minimum charging times of a type of battery cell in the battery at all charging phases.