Prohelion design and sells Battery Management Systems (BMS) designed for both automotive and fixed location environments.
The Prohelion Battery Management technology is built around three main components. The Battery Management Unit (BMU) which consists of a master board and a number of Cell Management Units (CMU)’s. In addition to the BMU and CMUs a typical Prohelion battery may also contain a 12v Control System which monitors the onboard 12v capabilities. For more information on these products, please see the main Prohelion Website.
Profinity supports the management and monitoring of the BMUs, CMUs and 12v systems via your profile.
A typical battery will generally only have one BMU, but larger packs or split packs like the ones used in racing can involve two or more BMUs. If your pack is configured like that then you simply add multiple BMUs to your profile with different base CAN addresses.
The top section shows data from the BMU, while the lower section shows CMU data – one row per CMU.
The top row of BMU data presents the following information (left to right):
Minimum voltage cell in the pack, and its voltage. The example shows Node (CMU) 8, Cell 0 is minimum, at 3699mV
Maximum voltage cell in the pack, and its voltage. The example shows Node (CMU) 14, Cell 7 is maximum, at 3799mV
Minimum temperature cell in the pack, and it’s temperature
Maximum temperature cell in the pack, and it’s temperature
Total pack voltage
Total pack current
Balance threshold voltage
Balance threshold minimum voltage (balance voltage – hysteresis)
CMU count in system
The next row shows Precharge status information on the left:
Current state (Idle, Precharge, Run, etc)
Contactor 12V supply voltage presence (mV on v4 or older BMUs)
The buttons in the BMU section shows the various status flags, some flags are normal and show green when engaged, if buttons are showing orange or red then consult the BMU manual for more information.
Note that when not engaged or receiving messages from the control module the BMU will drop back to its safe precharge state which is the error state. Consult the BMU documentation for more information but note that that error state can be part of normal operation.
CMU Power supply OK
Any cell OverVoltage
Any cell UnderVoltage
Any cell OverTemperature
Any cell untrusted
CMU and vehicle timeout errors The right-hand side shows
Fan speed for both fans
SOC and Balance SOC in Ah
SOC and Balance SOC in %
The lower section of the program shows telemetry data from the CMUs, one row per CMU. The information shown is:
CMU Serial number
CMU circuit board (PCB) temperature
CMU external (cell) temperature
1–8 cell voltage measurements
The data is highlighted in various ways to quickly understand the system status
Cells currently balancing have a blue background
The minimum and maximum cells have bold text and are colour coded (green shows highest voltage, brown lowest)
Cell in yellow have trust errors
Cells not present (where the CMU has been programmed to monitor less than 8 cells) have no text, and a mid-gray background
Prohelion also offers a 12v control module that can be used to provide power to onboard 12v systems and is typically used in a racing environment. This module has a seperate control panel that can be added to the profile and provides additional data on the performance of the 12v system.
