Mouser Electronics White Paper
As mentioned earlier, some automakers are also releasing EV
charging electronics that can be tied to a home service, much like a
backup generator. These systems can be used to charge the EV and
supply the home with AC when the grid fails. In future cases, this
vehicle-to-grid (V2G) connection may also use the EV battery as a full
BESS—the EV battery used to reduce energy bills using smart control.
Hence, smart homes with BESSs of the future may include solar or
wind power, EV BESS, a home BESS, and the necessary systems to
integrate these renewables and battery energy storage technologies
in an optimized home energy system that minimizes home energy
costs and ensures reliability even in severe weather or outages.
To achieve this, however, designs will need to achieve high
levels of efficiency, reliability, and performance while mitigating
environmental challenges such as temperature extremes, high
winds, moisture ingress, pests, and corrosives. Designers must
protect these electronics from the ambient environment while
ensuring an optimal local environment for the electronics.
For these reasons, home BESSs and other home energy electronics
must be located within protective enclosures that often include
thermal management solutions. Within these enclosures, there
are a variety of interconnect types. These include terminal blocks,
many types of electrical wiring, varieties of connector types, and
busbars. There are also several types of interconnects and conduits
used to connect the different home energy electronics enclosures.
Designers must select these interconnects to conform to regional
building codes and to ensure the safety and performance of these
systems. In addition to reliability, interconnect considerations must
also account for the interconnect adding resistance, inductance, and
capacitance, which may be affected by environmental conditions
and could impact the operation of the electronics in the system.
As shown in Figure 4, the typical connector
requirements for a BESS include the following:
1. SW1 Connectors
2. Terminal Blocks
3. Mini-Fit Connectors
4. Off-the-Shelf Power and Signal Discrete Wire Cable Assemblies
5. Nano-Fit Connectors
6. Busbars
7. PowerPlane Busbar Connectors
8. Mega-Fit Connectors
Figure 4: Typical connector requirements for a BESS. (Source: Molex)
