Temperature sensor

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Battery management system

The electronics and software that keep a battery inside its safe window: measuring every cell voltage and many temperatures, estimating SOC and SOH, balancing cells, computing current limits, controlling the contactors and reporting over the vehicle network.

Derating

Reducing the allowed charge or discharge power as the battery approaches a limit — low temperature, high temperature, high or low SOC, or age. It is how a BMS keeps the cells safe while letting the vehicle do as much as it can.

Operating temperature

The temperature range a cell may be charged and discharged in, typically 0–45 °C for charging and −20–60 °C for discharging. Charging below 0 °C risks lithium plating; above the range the cell ages fast and may vent.

Thermal management

Keeping cells in their comfortable range, roughly 15–35 °C, and within a few degrees of each other: liquid cooling plates, refrigerant plates or immersion for heat removal, and heaters or waste heat for warming before fast charging in the cold.

Thermocouples, RTDs and fibre-optic sensors

Temperature sensors used alongside the NTC thermistors of a BMS. Thermocouples, junctions of two dissimilar wires such as type K or T, are cheap, small and standard in cell testing, good to about ±1–2 °C; platinum RTDs such as the Pt100 reach a few tenths of a degree; fibre-optic sensors ignore electrical noise and can sit inside a cell.

Virtual temperature sensor

A temperature computed rather than measured: a thermal model fed with current, coolant temperature and the readings of nearby sensors infers the temperature of cells, or cell cores, that carry no sensor. Packs often fit one thermistor for several cells, and a large cell’s core runs hotter than its surface under load, so derating depends on such estimates.

References & further reading

Further reading on this topic

These sources provide broader context; they are not presented as citations for every statement in this entry.

1. A General Energy Balance for Battery Systems

   Dawn Bernardi, Ellen Pawlikowski, John Newman · Journal of The Electrochemical Society · 1985

   Topic background · Battery energy balance and irreversible and reversible heat contributions. Reduced thermal models require explicit assumptions and current-sign conventions.

2. University Physics Volume 2, §1.6: Mechanisms of Heat Transfer

   OpenStax, Rice University

   Topic background · Conduction, convection, radiation and thermal resistance.