Date: 06/05/2012

Progress report on the EU FP7 ESTRELIA project from Austriamicrosystems

Austriamicrosystems has announced successful progress of the first six months of the EU FP7 project ESTRELIA (Energy storage with lowered cost and improved safety and reliability for electrical vehicles).

The project ESTRELIA aims to provide building elements with enhanced reliability and safety at lowered costs for smart energy storage for FEVs. This will be accomplished through a modular approach based on optimized ultra capacitor power packs developed by Valeo. Corning will provide prototype ultra capacitor cells projected with up to 50% energy density advantage over commercially available products. The performance of the power packs will be evaluated by Austrian Battery Research Lab. New battery management (BMS) ICs from austriamicrosystems provide a flexible active cell balancing chip set suited for the high accuracy demanding monitoring of Li-Ion batteries. ESTRELIA will also develop new safety sensors which are based on silicon based MEMS approaches delivering enhanced safety functions at lowered cost compared to existing solutions.

According to the press release, the project results after the first six months in detail are:

Based on several inputs from car manufacturers the IC specification and design for the Battery Management ICs is progressing very well. A detailed concept using self-triggered power antifuses to bypass faulty battery cells has been developed and supported by device simulation. This is a first step to provide a cost effective solution to single cell failure for the future. Also the development of the very important safety sensors for EV's is on schedule. For the new gas sensor the first modified samples for battery testing have been provided and for the MEMS based spark detection sensor the appropriate piezo resistive concept has been selected and the design optimization is running. First samples of the ultracapacitor cell samples with high energy densities in the range of 7-9 Wh/L have already been investigated. By the end of the project, up to 50% higher energy density in the power pack is an intended innovation of the ESTRELIA project.