Electrification typically means replacing an engine that burns fossil fuel partly or completely with an electric motor and battery system. This approach can be applied to many different systems from portable generators through to air transport.
Designing a battery pack means you need to understand the electrification system and requirements that it will operate in. This is the same whether the battery is for a remote control or a space station. It might just be fewer requirements, but there will be requirements and inputs from the system.
In simple terms it is:
- How much energy is required?
- How much power is needed?
- What is the system voltage?
However, this simple list rapidly gets expanded.
- Environmental conditions
- Continuous power
- Maximum and minimum system voltage
- Maximum system current
- Operational states of the complete system
- Typical user cycles
- Available volume for battery pack
- Maximum mass
- Servicing requirements
- Transport requirements
- Legal requirements
One of the first tasks though is to draw a system boundary diagram. In this way you start to understand what the battery is connected to and what those connected devices mean to the battery. Also, you can look at the connections and states of the system.