Lithium-ion batteries are complex systems and making a simulation model of them is always challenging. A method for producing an accurate model with high capabilities for predicting the behavior of the battery in a time and cost efficient way is desired in this field of work. The aim of this thesis has been to develop a method to be close to the desired method as much as possible, especially in two important aspects, time and cost. The method which is the goal of this thesis should fulfill the below five requirements:

1. Able to produce a generic battery model for different types of lithium-ion batteries

2. No or low cost for the development of the model

3. A time span around one week for obtaining the model

4. Able to predict the most aspects of the battery’s behavior like the voltage, SOC, temperature and, preferably, simulate the degradation effects, safety and thermal aspects

5. Accuracy with less than 15% error

The start point of this thesis was the study of current methods for cell modeling. Based on their approach, they are divided into three categories, abstract, black box and white box methods. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, but none of them are able to fulfill the above requirements.

This thesis presents a method, called “gray box”, which is, partially, a mix of the black and white boxes’ concepts. The gray box method uses values for model’s parameters from different sources. Firstly, some chemical/physical measurements like in the case of the white box method, secondly, some of the physical tests/experiments used in the case of the black box method and thirdly, information provided by cell datasheets, books, papers, journals and scientific databases.

As practical part of this thesis, a prismatic cell, EIG C20 with 20Ah capacity was selected as the sample cell and its electrochemical model was produced with the proposed method. Some of the model’s parameters are measured and some others are estimated. Also, the abilities of AutoLion, a specialized software for lithium-ion battery modeling were used to accelerate the modeling process.

Finally, the physical tests were used as part of the references for calculating the accuracy of the produced model. The results show that the gray box method can produce a model with nearly no cost, in less than one week and with error around 30% for the HPPC tests and, less than this, for the OCV and voltage tests. The proposed method could, largely, fulfill the five mentioned requirements. These results were achieved even without using any physical tests/experimental data for tuning the parameters, which is expected to reduce the error considerably. These are promising results for the idea of the gray box which is in its nascent stages and needs time to develop and be useful for commercial purposes.