Engineers looking for a new way to simulate battery cells as they develop new battery management systems might be interested in the latest PXI battery simulator modules from Pickering Interfaces. The new single-slot simulators can be 2- or 4-channel and are capable of supplying up to 8 volts and 5 Amps per channel. and the ground (1000V isolation) and, as a result, series connections can simulate batteries in a stacked architecture.
The company said the channels are fully isolated from each other (750V isolation channel to channel). The names of the new modules – 41-754 (PXI) and 43-754 (PXIe) – give away one of Pickering’s attitudes when it comes to introducing new products: don’t abandon the old stuff.
“One of the things we do tend to do is something that some manufacturers have abandoned PXI in favor of good old PXIe,” Stephen Jenkins, simulation product manager at Pickering, told SAE Media. “We continue to do both, because many of our customers still have both available.”
As an example of what the new modules would allow, Jenkins pointed to publicly available information of the Kia EV6 long-range battery pack, which uses a total of 384 cells, configured in 192 rows with two cells in a parallel structure and with 12-cell modules.
If a company were looking to test a new BMS for a battery like that, “What we would pitch to them would be two of the six-channel, 300 milliamp battery controllers and four 4-channel 5 amp battery controllers,” Jenkins said. “With the assumption that you're still looking at a balancing current of 150 milliamps per cell, we could connect all 32 modules in parallel using these four 4-channel battery simulators to simulate this entire battery pack. And that would leave us with two slots available in the PXI chassis.” The empty slots could then be outfitted with a thermocouple simulator module or a programmable resistor module, he said.
“We could also add in other products, like a fault insertion unit that would allow it to simulate battery cell faults, what would happen in terms of how the battery management system reacts to, for example, a cell going open circuit or short circuit, for example,” he said. “You could switch those faults in and out. That's one of the main things we're trying to stress, really, is because it's a PXI/PXIe chassis format, it's modular, it's scalable, it's compatible with your probably existing test systems and if you buy a small system now and you want to scale up in the future, you can get a bigger chassis, you can add other cards.”
The 41-754 (PXI) and 43-754 (PXIe) modules will offer voltage and current readback and have independent sense connections. Each channel is programmable up to 8V and, as stated, the communications interface is PXI/Ethernet. The modules won’t be available until early 2026, but Pickering is taking orders now.
“It's working, it's in R&D, and they're just doing the final testing,” Jenkins said. “It's too good an opportunity when this Battery Show's at Detroit, and everybody from the battery, electric vehicle, and automotive industry is going to be around.”
The modules will be manufactured in the UK and the Czech Republic, so they could be affected by tariffs. Jenkins said the expected list price, including current tariffs, will be $6,700 for the two-channel model and $8,900 for the four-channel version, but pricing depends on scale.
