Standards and Regulations for Battery Management Systems in Germany: Review and Improvement Potentials

Abstract

Battery performance and safety heavily depend on battery management systems (BMS), which monitor and control them during operation. Given its crucial role, a BMS should meet several requirements in functionality, performance, robustness, and reliability, often defined in standards and regulations. Considering rapid technological advancements in batteries, updating these requirements is essential to reflect growing system complexity. Therefore, this study reviews current standards and regulations for BMSs in Germany, a key player in the global battery sector. It distinguishes between functional and non-functional, as well as qualitative and quantitative requirements. The review finds that most existing standards focus on qualitative aspects and lack measurable benchmarks, particularly for critical BMS functions like state monitoring and energy management. To address this, this study proposes improvement suggestions and highlights the need for consistent definitions and performance requirements, especially for the state of charge (SoC) and state of health (SoH). It also identifies emerging challenges, such as second-life batteries, BMS, and cloud BMS as important areas for future standards. By mapping standards to BMS functions and identifying gaps, this work offers valuable guidance for improving BMS performance, interoperability, and safety.