Towards the use of Lithium-ion battery on LEO applications

摘要

Since the eighties, the general state of the art followed by most of the spacecraft designers has been to use NiCd cells batteries in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications and NiH_2 cells batteries in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) applications. The European Li-Ion battery technology is now well advanced, and with the constant need to reduce mass, or to improve the energy density, our attention is turned to Li-Ion batteries. However, to properly size power subsystems, it is very important to improve our knowledge on the electrical performances of such batteries ; this is particularly true for non-regulated power concepts where the overall power performances are directly linked to the battery voltage. An electrical model has been built based on available test results and on specific characterisation tests.