Design of Bidirectional DC/DC Battery Management System for Electrical Yacht

Abstract: Electrical vehicles are getting more popular as the technology around batteries and electrical motors are catching up to the more common combustion engines. Electrical boats are no exception but there are still a lot of boats using old combustion engines that have a big impact on the environment. This study aims to deepen the understanding of the integration of electrical motors into boats by proposing a design of a system using a bidirectional synchronous buckboost converter. This converter is designed to handle the power transfer in a dual battery application, namely consisting of a 12 V battery and a 48 V battery. The converter includes proposed components, a PCB design, as well as the software that is required for the control of the power transfer. The results show that the converter design meets specification and, when using a test-bench, the software is capable of controlling the converter to achieve constant current and constant voltage in both directions.