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R&D Focus

RAIBA, An Intelligent Reconfigurable Battery System

RAIBA is developed to solve the heterogeneity issue of battery array systems.

RAIBA is developed to solve the heterogeneity issue of battery array systems.

RAIBA– Reconfigurable and Regulatable Battery Array System won an R&D 100 Award in 2019. It is a world-leading technology using AI to control electric discharge load of battery modules and integrate the storage system of new and old modules. This allows different battery modules to complement each other in the most efficient way, reduce energy waste, construction cost and extend system cycle life.

RAIBA enables dynamic reconfiguration of the inter-battery connectivity in a battery array, and provides reconfigurability that accommodates the heterogeneity in retired batteries when they are used to build a renewable energy storage system, and regulatability that significantly cuts down the implementation cost of AC-DC and DC-DC energy conversion.

Using RAIBA technology in energy storage systems can reduce system construction cost by 64% and extend system cycle life by 223%. Furthermore, it can increase battery system stability and reduce the operation cost by 35%.

RAIBA won a 2019 R&D 100 Award.

RAIBA won a 2019 R&D 100 Award.

“RAIBA grants a battery the array programmatic control capabilities that can be used to squeeze out all the charges, reduce the total charging time, and cut down the loss and cost of converting DC to AC energy,” said Kai-Cheung Juang, Division Director of ITRI’s Information and Communications Research Laboratories. He further pointed out that this technology also addresses the safety concerns regarding the explosion risks of retired batteries. The current RAIBA prototype incorporates an innovative run-time algorithm which serves as an early warning mechanism capable of detecting abnormalities from internal voltage and capacity measurements.

In sum, RAIBA offers the flexibility to use a dynamic number of batteries to keep the electric loads fluctuating while reducing the cost of the power conversion system with a distributed set of cheaper inverters integrated into the battery array. The end result is an increase of the batteries’ per-charge usage time, which leads to less unnecessary charging and thus an extension of the battery array total lifetime.

ITRI has currently worked with Chroma ATE Inc. in building a 100-battery RAIBA prototype and applying it to a test trial using retired batteries from electric vehicles (EVs). It also collaborated with China Petroleum Corporation to apply RAIBA in the implementation of an experimental EV charging system. The objective is to facilitate the sustainable development of energy storage infrastructure and EVs, and create new business opportunities for renewable energy.

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