Custom Power Management System

Capacity and load sharing for hybrid electric generators and portable energy storage systems

The company Power Modules B.V. produces hybrid electric generators and energy storage systems (often combined in one system). Applications are for example temporary off-grid energy supplies for construction sites and smart on-grid storage of energy generated by solar panels to make better use of it.

The necessary power and battery capacity can vary a lot, depending on the application. To make a new system for every new case is expensive. You want to have a modular system to be able to easily adjust the power and capacity to the needs. Therefore we created a power management system (PMS) that can control several units to be able to share battery capacity and power.

Up to three energy storage systems can be connected, plus a generator. The PMS divides the energy demand over all connected systems based on power, capacity and state of charge. It also controls a large relay to connect or cut-off a generator. The power of the generator is also divided over all the connected systems depending on battery state of charge. The PMS communicates with the other systems through Modbus TCP and MQTT. It consists of a shared emergency stop (killswitch) and several circuit brakers and fuses for safety. It has an internal uninterruptible power supply and hardware watchdog to make sure the software keeps running.

Settings can be changed with a web-based application that runs on any device with a webbrowser.