In response to evolving needs of the electric vehicle and energy storage industry, Bitrode has announced an improvement in the rise time of their FTF line of pack testing equipment. In the battery industry, a reduced rise time is important as it provides the battery chemist, pack designer or testing laboratory with the ability to aggressively test battery pack and product designs to performance levels expected to be seen in actual use.
The transition time for the current to ramp from 10 percent to 90 percent of full scale in a Bitrode FTF has been decreased from approximately 15 milliseconds (ms) to less than 4ms. Similarly, the 0 to 100 percent transition time is also reduced from approximately 15 ms to less than 8 ms with no over-shoot. Just as noteworthy, when operating in battery simulator mode and regulating output voltage, Bitrode’s FTF products accommodate fast load current transitions from 0 to 100 percent in less than 3 ms. The result is the ability to test sudden and demanding load changes from motor drives or similar as part of drive cycle stress testing of batteries and EV packs, as well as charging/discharging banks of ultra-capacitors.
