Examples of battery pack configurations, going up in total energy content down the page. Sort of as we have separated out the packs that are arranged as multiple packs in parallel, arranging them based on the size of the basic building block.
When assembling large battery packs it is necessary to connect cells in series and parallel. Actually the normal method is to assemble them in parallel groups and then to assemble these groups in series.
Low Voltage (LV) packs that are below 60V which is the safe DC working limit.
- 14 pouch cells
- Nominal voltage = 51 V
- Nominal energy = 1.7 kWh
- Configuration = 14s 1p
An extreme race car 48V MHEV battery pack.
- 14 A123 LFP pouch cells
- Nominal voltage = 48 V
- Nominal capacity = 37 Ah
- Nominal energy = 1.76 kWh
- Configuration = 14s 1p
With the Porsche 911 hybrid we see a switch to High Voltage (HV) for a very small battery pack, both in terms of capacity and physical size). HV brings an overhead in terms of complexity of the BMS, sensing, control gear and safety. Hence there really has to be a significant increase in power capability to make this worthwhile. In this example the pack is able to deliver nearly twice the peak power of the 48V Audi MHEV plus system.
2024 Porsche 911 T-Hybrid Battery Pack
- estimated 216 V4Drive 21700 cells
- Nominal voltage = 388 V
- Nominal capacity = 5 Ah
- Nominal energy = 1.9 kWh
- Configuration = 108s 2p
This post has been built based on the support of and sponsorship from: Quarto Technical Services, Eatron Technologies and About:Energy
Commercial vehicle engine start and vehicle LV system batteries have a tough operational envelope. The 24V Sodium-ion pack from CATL is able to operate down to -40°C.
- 8 prismatic sodium ion cells
- Nominal voltage = 23.4 V
- Nominal capacity = 192 Ah
- Nominal energy = 4.5 kWh
- Configuration = 8s 1p
Battery pack designers are always being challenged to find a way of creating a flexible total pack design. Thus offering reusable building blocks across applications or even with the same application to create entry and premium variants. With this comes the dilemma of cells in parallel then series or series then parallel. Low cost and inflexible versus higher cost and complexity.
- 6480 Murata VTC6 18650 cells
- Arranged in 3 packs of 180s 12p
- Nominal voltage = 648 V
- Nominal energy = 3 x 24.3 kWh => 72.9 kWh
The pack design in this record breaking electric aircraft was designed with packs in parallel for redundancy, not flexibility.
- 384 NMC811 pouch cells
- Nominal voltage = 697V
- Nominal capacity = 120.5Ah
- Nominal energy = 84 kWh
- Configuration = 192s 2p
- 216 CATL NMC prismatic cells
- Nominal voltage ~390 V
- Nominal energy = 140 kWh
- Configuration = 108s 2p
There are many other examples of battery pack configurations, hopefully this gives an overview of the breadth. It does make us realise that we don’t have Grid BESS, Marine or Home BESS packs in our pack benchmarking pages.
More than 1250 packs and 33,000 datapoints have been collected together in this simple Excel spreadsheet.
This makes it easy to rapidly find and compare pack designs across a large number of parameters (total energy, usable SoC window, mass, volume, cooling type, year of production, etc).