Battery Voltage and Current Profile Monitoring System

Abstract

The increasing use of electrochemical batteries in energy storage and electric mobility applications has created a growing demand for reliable experimental tools to characterize their discharge behavior. However, high-precision commercial testing systems are often associated with elevated costs and proprietary architectures, limiting their accessibility in academic and research laboratories with constrained resources. This work presents the development of a low-cost experimental system for the acquisition and analysis of battery discharge curves, employing a DC/DC buck converter (ZK-6522C) as a controlled load, an INA219 sensor for real-time voltage and current measurements, and a MATLAB-based platform responsible for converter control through the Modbus protocol and synchronized acquisition of electrical variables. The experimental results successfully reproduce the characteristic discharge behavior commonly reported in the literature, including the initial voltage drop, the stable voltage plateau region, and the pronounced voltage decline observed near the end of the discharge cycle, thereby validating the system's capability to establish controlled and reproducible discharge conditions. The main contribution of this work is the development of a modular, flexible, and cost-effective platform that serves as an alternative to commercial testing equipment, with potential applications in both power electronics and energy storage research, as well as in the practical education and training of engineering students.