Development and Testing of Low-Cost Multi-Electronic Load Prototype for Nanosatellites

Nanosatellites are becoming the new age of satellites for their small size, lightweight, fast and low-cost development within a small team. However, even with those advantages, it is still needed to use batteries as a secondary power source during eclipses. Those batteries require a good selection before being tested under a specific environment and integrated within the Nanosatellite. During the selection procedure or even during testing, batterie’s cells need to be discharged and charged several times requiring an electronic load, this one very expensive. In this paper, a low-cost electronic load prototype has been proposed based on the same technology for commercial electronic loads. The proposed electronic load is part of a Lithium-Ion battery test bench developed for aerospace applications, it has three different modes: Constant Current, Constant Power, and Constant Resistor. The final prototype will be duplicated in order to have several electronic loads, which will allow for the simultaneous testing of multiple battery cells, reducing the time and effort required.