Proc.

of the IEEE International Conference on Smart Instrumentation, Measurement and Applications (ICSIMA)
26-27 November 2013, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Electric Vehicle Energy Management System using

National Instruments’ CompactRIO and LabVIEW
° °5
Syaifuddin Mohd∇1, Saiful A. Zulkifli 2, Redhata G. A Rangkuti*3, Mark Ovinis∇4 and Nordin Saad
∇
Mechanical Engineering Department,
°
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department,
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Sri Iskandar, Malaysia.
1
syaifuddin@petronas.com.my; 2saifulazrin_mz@petronas.com.my; 4mark_ovinis@petronas.com.my; 5nordiss@petronas.com.my
*
Project Department, PETRONAS Carigali Muriah Ltd., Jakarta, Indonesia.
3
redhata.rangkuti@petronas.com.my

Abstract—This paper describes development of an electric
propulsion system, energy management system (EMS) and
battery management system (BMS) to convert a conventional
internal-combustion-engine vehicle to a full electric vehicle. An
EMS is designed, built and tested with the objective of optimizing
electric power consumption of the converted electric vehicle and
extend its driving range. The ‘driver-assist’ system monitors
vehicle performance via an on-board data acquisition system. It
tracks, among others, vehicle speed, motor speed, power
consumption, battery and motor temperature and battery state of
charge (SOC) and gives feedback in terms of suggested actions
for the driver. The EMS is implemented on National Instruments’
CompactRIO embedded controller, programmed on LabVIEW
Real-Time software. The paper also describes development of a
graphical driver interface (GDI), based on the web server
function of the CompactRIO, implemented via TCP-IP connection
with a tablet PC. The GDI not only offers the driver control of
the EMS and in-vehicle data logging, but also remote monitoring
and control of the EMS via a wireless 3G internet connection.
Keywords- Electric Vehicle Propulsion; Energy Management
System; Real-Time Embedded System; Battery Management
System; In-Vehicle Data Logging; Graphical Driver Interface
I. INTRODUCTION
In the past several decades, internal combustion engine
vehicles (ICEV) have experienced continuous improvement in
fuel performance, vehicle control and safety measures.
However, efficiency of the internal combustion engine (ICE)
remains relatively low - at best, only about 30% of the energy
generated during combustion is converted to mechanical
power, while the significant portion is wasted to the
environment as heat.
Electric motors are more efficient than the ICE. With zero
exhaust emission, electric motor-powered vehicles help reduce
serious air pollution problems attributed to ICEV [1]. Electric
vehicles (EV) have many advantages over the ICEV; apart
from zero emissions and higher efficiency, an EV has noiseless
and smoother operation, and is independent of fossil fuels for
its immediate on-board energy source. Full electric, hybrid-
electric and fuel-cell vehicles are clear alternatives to
conventional ICEVs for years to come. However, due to the
This project is partly funded by PROTON Holdings Berhad, for the
competition PROTON Green Mobility Challenge (PGMC), October 2012.
limited energy storage density of today’s batteries, full-electric
vehicles have yet to achieve the same driving range as the
ICEV. An energy management system is therefore required to
achieve efficient usage of this limited energy storage.
In a project to convert a conventional vehicle to an EV for
the PROTON Green Mobility Challenge (PGMC) 2012
competition, the propulsion system is converted to an electric
propulsion system consisting of a 3-phase AC induction motor,
a motor controller and an energy storage device – a LiFePO4
rechargeable battery pack. To achieve optimum performance of
the propulsion system, three areas are investigated in this
project:
• Improvement of motor drive system
• Efficiency of electric propulsion system
• Power control strategy for different driving objectives
II. ELECTRIC VEHICLE OVERVIEW
Electric vehicles are propelled by an electric motor powered
by a motor drive, controller and battery pack. Electric motors
have numerous benefits compared to internal combustion
engines, including:
• Electric motors convert up to 85% of the chemical energy
of batteries to power the wheels.
• EVs release zero pollutants. Even though the power plant
generating electrical energy may be using fossil fuels and
still produce emissions, the emissions source is removed
from the streets to a centralized location where emission
can be more effectively controlled.
• Electrical energy can be produced from truly zero-
emission and renewable energy sources such as hydro,
solar and wind.
• Electric motors offer smoother and quieter operation and
require less maintenance.
• Possibility of obtaining electrical energy from renewable
energy sources reduces dependency on fossil fuels.
However, electric vehicles suffer the following drawbacks
associated with the on-board energy storage (batteries) [2]:
• EVs have shorter driving range: about 160-300 km per
full battery charge, while petrol vehicles can sometimes
go farther than 400 km before re-fuel.
• Re-charge time: battery packs need four to eight hour to
be fully re-charged. Even fast charging to 80% of its
capacity needs around 30 minutes.

978-1-4799-0843-1/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

 • The battery pack consisting of many individual battery The complete motor drive system
s includes a Curtis motor
units need to be replaced after several years and this can controller 1238R, a main contactor, a key switch relay and a
be very costly. Molex Mini 840 dashboard dispplay. Specifications of the Curtis
• Significant vehicle space is needed to install the battery AC50 induction motor are sum mmarized in Table I [3]. Graphs
pack, which is also very heavy. of motor torque, battery voltage, horsepower and RMS current
vs. speed are shown in Fig. 3 [33].
III. ELECTRIC MOTOR AND MOTOR CONTROLLER
B. Motor Controller
A. Electric Motor Options for EV Motor controller model Currtis 1238R is used to control the
There are several options for the electric motor,
m as illustrated AC50 induction motor. It provides
p flexibility and power
in Fig. 1. A squirrel cage motor is an asyncchronous induction through inclusion of a fieldd-programmable logic control,
motor widely used in various applications due to its relatively embedded in a state-of-the-art motor
m controller [5].
low price, high strength and good dynamic peerformance, which The embedded logic controlller runs a fully functional field-
makes it a good option for EV propulssion. A switched oriented AC motor control opeerating system (OS) that can be
reluctance (SR) motor has low manufacturinng price but it has user-tailored via parameter moddification. The OS also contains
high torque variations and noisier operation. logic to execute OEM-developped software, called VCL, which
Permanent-magnet brushless DC motors (BLDC)( have been can be used to enhance conntroller capabilities beyond the
in broad use with EVs due to its high pow wer density, lower basics. The VCL (Vehicle Conntrol Language) is an innovative
weight, compact size and simplified hardwaare. BLDC motors programming language develooped by Curtis. Several electric
are implemented in Toyota Prius and Hondaa Civic. However, vehicle tasks are distinctively built into the VCL code [5].
the rare-earth materials used for the permannent magnets are a TABLE I. CURTIS AC50 INDU
UCTION MOTOR SPECIFICATIONS
significant environment concern [1].
Hybrid-field excited permanent magnet motorm offers better Curtis AC50 In
nduction Motor
performance, as its field can be strengtheneed and weakened, Diameter 8 inches
but it has higher manufacturing price and com mplexity of control Weight 122 lb
is increased. In this project, an AC inductioon motor has been Voltage 72-108 Volt
provided by the competition organizer, whicch is manufactured Ampere Rating 550 Amp
by Curtis. The exact motor model is Curttis AC50 (Fig. 2), Motor Efficiency 89%
Peak Power 52 HP
widely used in electric vehicle applicatioons [3]. An AC Torque 115 ft/lbs
induction motor is a commutator-less mootor that offers a RPM 6500
number of benefits over conventional DC motor drive: low
weight, small dimensions, low price, and highh efficiency [4].

Fig. 1. Electric motor options for EV

Fig. 2. Curtis 1238R (top) and National Instruments’ Com

mpactRIO (bottom) Fig. 3. Torque, horsepower, voltagee and current vs speed of Curtis AC50
 IV. STRATEGIES FOR EV OPTIMIZZATION
In order to achieve best performance of the
t EV propulsion
system, two areas of study are investigated:
• Enhancement of the motor drive systtem by increasing
thermal limits of the motor and motor m controller:
increased levels of motor torque will w increase the
continuous motor current which in turrn increases motor
temperature. To overcome this problem m, a liquid cooling
system over the motor and motor controller
c can be
Fig. 4. Liquid cooling system for electtric motor
implemented as illustrated in Fig. 4. With
W liquid cooling,
it is possible to extend the maximum speed
s of the motor
as shown in the graph of Fig. 5.
• Efficiency of the electric propulsion n system: A more
efficient system consumes less power and thus prolongs
battery life. It is critical for the motor control
c strategy to
ensure that the motor operates most of o the time in the
high-efficiency regions of the motor eff fficiency map (Fig.
6). This energy management and suupervisory control
cannot be implemented by the Curtis motor controller;
instead, it is programmed on a seeparate controller
hardware.

V. ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (EMS) ON NATIONAL Fig. 5. Motor peak torque with liquid cooling
INSTRUMENTS’ COMPACTRIO
O
The main function of the EMS is to monittor various vehicle
parameters and to assist the driver in operatting the vehicle, to
ensure the electric motor operates with hiigh efficiency. To
reduce development time of the EMS, a modular,
m embedded
real-time controller CompactRIO from Natioonal Instruments is
used (Fig. 2). NI CompactRIO (cRIO) is a reconfigurable
system for integrated real-time control and data
d acquisition. It
has a rugged hardware architecture which includes I/O
modules, reconfigurable FPGA chassis, and real-time
controller. The user-programmer is able to develop and
customize a variety of embedded control and monitoring
applications.

VI. LABVIEW REAL-TIME SOFTTWARE

The CompactRIO is programmable usinng LabVIEW, also
from NI, a graphical programming environm ment which can be
used to develop advanced measurement, test and control
applications. LabVIEW provides a lot of feaatures and tools to
create user-defined interfaces, differentiablee by its graphical
programming language along with an inttegrated compiler,
linker and debugging tools. LabVIEW differrs from most other
programming languages in two majoor ways. First,
programming is implemented by wiring mutually
m graphical
icons on a block diagram, which is then coompiled directly to
machine-executable code. The graphical representations
r in
LabVIEW contain programming concepts similarly
s found in
text-based language, such as data types, evvent handling, and
object-oriented programming.
Fig. 6. Efficiency map of induction mootor
VII. BATTERY MANAG
GEMENT SYSTEM (BMS)
In this project, 13 units of o LG Chemicals’ Lithium-ion
batteries are used for the vehiccle’s energy storage. An off-the-
shelf BMS from Orion is ussed to manage and protect the
battery pack, installed in the vehicle
v behind the batteries. The
13 units of batteries are conneccted in series, with each battery
consisting of 4 cells each (2 in series and 2 in parallel). The
battery pack has a maximum continuous charging current of
172 Amps, a maximum continuuous discharging current of 460
Amps at SOC50 for 30 seconnds at 25 °C and a maximum
discharging current of 600 Ampps.
The Orion BMS is chosenn because of its high level of
immunity to electrical noise anda voltage transients found in
automotive environments. Furthermore,
F it has a dual
programmable controller-area-nnetwork (CAN) interface which
has enabled CAN messages to be integrateed with the CAN- EMS also sends a signal to thee Curtis motor controller to co-
enabled CompactRIO for telemetry purposes.. ordinate on the level of re--generative braking to ensure
The basic features of this BMS include cuurrent and voltage optimum state-of-charge of thee battery pack.
protection (from over-charge and over-diischarge), thermal
protection (over-temperature protection wiith fan controls), C. Graphical Driver Interface (GDI)
( Design
passive cell balancing (to maximize ussable capacity of A driver interface is designed and implemented on a touch-
batteries), internal resistance monitoring of individual
i cells (to screen, Windows-based tablet PC, to display various vehicle
determine battery condition) and state of charge
c monitoring parameters, receive inputs from m the driver and relay decisions
(SOC, coulomb counting with dynamic drift correction). of the EMS to the driver.
Coulomb counting is susceptible to accumulated error and this
must be corrected. TABLE II. SUBSYSTEMS & CAB
BLE TYPES OF ELECTRIC VEHICLE
In this project, the coulomb counting methodm is used in
conjunction with the open circuit voltage method
m with takes Part Sub
bsystem Name
into account charging efficiency and self-disccharging rate for a
A Touch-screenn driver interface (GUI)
more accurate SOC estimation. For this appplication, 13 cell
voltage taps, a total pack voltage tap, a HallH Effect current B Gearbox & differential gear
sensor and four temperature sensors are useed. Inputs required
C Curtis AC
C50 induction motor
of the user include the specifications for thhe battery cell, the
battery cell's SOC versus the open cell vooltage at different D Curtis 12338R motor controller
working temperatures, the cell’s chargingg efficiency over E Energy Management System (EMS) controller/CompactRIO
different operating temperature and the cell’s self-discharging
rate over different range of temperature. F Battery pack & Orion Baattery Management System (BMS)
These cell characteristics will define the safe and optimum G LED indicator panel for gear-shift assist
operating conditions for the battery cells, to extend its life.
During charging, the BMS controls the flow of current into the No Power/Signal Type Cable Type
battery pack (based on manufacturer’s chargee current limit) via 1 Ethernet network UTP CAT-5 cable
an ON/OFF digital signal sent to a Manzaniita battery charger.
Internal shunt resistors are used to dissipate excess
e energy from 2 3-phase motor power Heavy-gauge power cable
the cell in the pack with higher voltage. During discharging, 3 DC bus link +/- Heavy-gauge power cable
the BMS stops the flow of current out off the battery pack
(based on discharge current limit). 4 Various signals Single/multi-core signal cable

VIII. EMS DESIGN & IMPLEMEN

NTATION

A. System Layout and Schematics

Table II lists the different sub-systems of the
t EV, while Fig.
7 and 8 show the layout and schematics resppectively. The sub-
systems are connected to each other usingg certain types of
cable, which are also listed in Table II.
B. Energy Management System Design
The EMS communicates with the Currtis 1238R motor
controller using RS232 serial connectionn. A serial data
acquisition program is developed on LabVIEW and deployed to
the CompactRIO. Early EMS designs are deeveloped alongside
bench test experiments (see below).
Inputs to the EMS controller include:
• Battery state of charge (SOC)
• Battery voltage
• Motor current
• Motor speed
• Vehicle speed
• Gear position
• Various temperatures of motor, motor m controller &
battery pack
Based on the above inputs and specific control
c algorithms
to achieve different race objectives of the PG
GMC competition,
the EMS controller continuously makees decisions and
provides suggestions to the driver on timing for shifting of the
transmission gear - whether to maintain currrent gear position,
up-shift or down-shift - to obtain optimum performance. The Fig. 7. EV Subsystems Layout
 Fig. 9 shows an early GDI design, duriing the bench test
stage. The final design which is deployed on the tablet PC
located in the dashboard of the EV, is show wn in Figs. 10 and
11, which also show different tabs of the inteerface program. In-
vehicle data logging is another feature of thee EMS, which can
be activated via the GDI. Among the param meters that can be
logged include battery pack voltage, batterry state of charge,
motor current, motor speed, vehicle speed, gear position and
battery temperature.
Both digital and analog data can be loggedd by the EMS. The
logged files are saved in the built-in flashh memory of the
CompactRIO, which can later be post-processed using 3rd party
software such as Microsoft Excel.
Fig. 9. RPM and current reading progrram of EMS during bench test
D. EMS and Propulsion System Bench Test
Bench testing for the EMS, motor and motor
m controller is
accomplished in the lab, outside of the vehhicle, as shown in
Fig. 12. The list of components for the bench test is given in
Table III. A control box consisting of throtttle potentiometer,
brake potentiometer, power switch and reverse direction
switch, is employed, to replace actual innstruments in the
vehicle.

+
DC/DC +

- Converter -

Fig. 10. Main tab of EMS as viewed on

o Tablet PC
Key Switch
+ -
12 Volt
RS2 32

RJ45

DIO Module

AO Module

M AI Module
Power Various parameters:
NC Steering Motor • Batteryy state of charge
• Batteryy voltage
• Motor current
EMS • Motor speed
P (CompactRIO) • Vehiclee speed
• Driver’s accelerator
Brake
NC on
positio
Vacuum Pump • Driver’s brake pedal
on
positio

Fig. 11. Second tab of EMS as viewedd on Tablet PC

LED Indicattor

Tablet PC
(GUI) Throttle

Brake

High-Voltage
Contactor

Fuse
(400 A)

Manual
Contactor
+ -
Battery Bank
Fig. 8. EV schematics
Fig. 12. Bench test for EMS and propuulsion system
 TABLE III. COMPONENTS OF EMS AND PROPULSION SYSTEM
BENCH TEST

No Component
1 Curtis AC50 Induction Motor

2 Curtis 1238R Motor Controller

3 Molex Display 840

4 General Control Box & Relay

5 Battery Pack 72 Volt

6 Main Contactor

7 Battery 12 Volt

8 LabVIEW GDI

9 NI CompactRIO Real-Time Controller

E. Battery Charging and BMS Bench Test

Charging test for the battery management system (BMS) is
also achieved in the lab. An off-the-shelf battery charger is
used - Manzanita Micro PFC-50. An image of the battery
charging and BMS bench test is shown in Fig. 13 while
schematics of the entire EV system including the BMS and
battery charger is shown in Fig. 14. The Orion BMS has a
thermal management system consisting of thermistors for
measuring battery temperature, an ON/OFF output and PWM
output for control of an external exhaust fan.

IX. CONCLUSION
An electric vehicle energy management system (EMS) is
described in this paper, developed and implemented using Fig. 14. Schematics of entire EV system with BMS and battery charger
National Instruments’ CompactRIO. The EMS is a controller
separate from the motor controller. Along with a battery
management system (BMS), the EMS is used to convert a [1]
conventional vehicle to an all-electric vehicle (EV). The main
objective of the EMS is to monitor vehicle conditions and
assist the driver in operating the vehicle, to ensure the electric [2]
motor operates with high efficiency. The BMS serves to ensure
that the battery cells have a balanced state of charge (SOC) and
to manage thermal conditions of the battery pack. Together, the [3]
EMS and BMS improve the EV’s performance by optimizing
its energy usage to extend the converted vehicle’s driving
range. [4]
[5]
[6]
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Fig. 13. Bench test of battery charging with BMS