Search

DE-102024210872-A1 - Procedure for the provision of battery usage certificates

DE102024210872A1DE 102024210872 A1DE102024210872 A1DE 102024210872A1DE-102024210872-A1

Abstract

A procedure for providing battery usage certificates.

Inventors

  • Andrei Florescu
  • Vasile-Cosmin Lazar
  • Tudor Santejudean

Assignees

  • Robert Bosch Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung

Dates

Publication Date
20260513
Application Date
20241113

Claims (10)

  1. Method for providing battery usage certificates, the method comprising the following steps: a) (200) Collecting battery usage data, including at least one of: stress, current, state of charge, maximum capacity, temperature, and internal resistance of the battery; b) (201) Estimating, based on the collected battery usage data, critical battery parameters, including at least one of: health, stress factors to which the battery is subjected, and anomalies detected during battery operation; c) (202) Storing the estimated critical parameters in a distributed ledger with a generated digital signature; d) (206) Generating a battery usage certificate containing the estimated critical parameters using a smart contract deployed in the distributed ledger, the smart contract being designed to: - (204) Receive a request for a battery usage certificate, the request containing a battery identifier; - (205) Accessing the stored estimated critical parameters according to the battery identifier; wherein the generated battery usage certificate is verifiable by reference to the smart contract and/or by comparing the contained critical parameters with the estimated critical parameters stored in the distributed ledger by verifying the digital signature.
  2. Procedure according to Claim 1 , the smart contract is further designed to automatically generate a battery usage certificate when at least one critical battery parameter reaches a certain critical value or when a critical anomaly is detected.
  3. Procedure according to Claim 2 , the smart contract is further designed to automatically provide the generated battery usage certificate to the user and/or the warranty company in order to decide on necessary battery maintenance procedures.
  4. Method according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the critical anomaly is determined by analyzing the battery usage data with a recurrent neural Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network trained on a dataset of battery usage data labeled with anomaly indicators, and wherein the critical anomaly is detected when the output of the Long Short-Term Memory network exceeds a predetermined threshold.
  5. Method according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the battery usage data is collected at predetermined time intervals.
  6. Method according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the generated battery usage certificate is stored in the distributed ledger.
  7. Method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the distributed ledger comprises a blockchain-based design.
  8. System for generating and managing battery usage certificates, wherein the system is designed to carry out the procedure according to one of the Claims 1 until 7 to execute, comprising: - (100) a data acquisition module designed to perform the collection of battery usage data; - (101) a processing module designed to perform the estimation of critical battery parameters; - (102) a blockchain module designed to perform the storage of the estimated critical parameters; and - (103) a certificate generation module designed to execute the smart contract.
  9. A computer program product comprising computer-executable instructions stored on a non-volatile, computer-readable medium, wherein the instructions are executed by a system according to Claim 8 are executable to complete the steps of Claims 1 until 7 to carry out.
  10. Use of the procedure according to Claim 1 until 7 in electrical energy storage systems for electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, aircraft, pedelecs, or e-bikes.

Description

Field of invention The invention relates to a method for providing battery usage certificates, a system for generating and managing battery usage certificates, a computer program product, and/or a use of a method for providing battery usage certificates according to the preamble of the independent claims. State of the art The idea of storing digital (usage) certificates in distributed databases is not uncommon. While this approach works, it still requires the involvement of a third party, as the certificates must be issued and signed by a legal (and trusted) authority. Furthermore, the certificates are stored in distributed databases, where their immutability and authenticity are not guaranteed: the certificates can be altered or even completely deleted from the databases if unauthorized third parties gain access. In the printed publication US 2020 052 911 A1 Certification authorities are responsible for issuing digital certificates. The validity of a digital certificate is ensured and guaranteed by the certification authorities for a defined scope of validity. Certification is guaranteed by signatures from entities that form a so-called chain of trust, which must be validated by a central root certification authority. However, this approach has the same limitations: a central root certification authority is required to maintain the chain of trust within the system, while multiple certification authorities are responsible for issuing certificates; and if both the usage information of a certificate and the certificate itself have been altered, the validity of the certificate can no longer be proven. To solve the problems of authenticity and immutability of certificates and to provide an automatic and trustworthy certification system that works without the involvement of third parties, smart contracts could be used to automatically generate certificates, while the issued certificates are stored in a distributed ledger, such as the blockchain (e.g. Ethereum), or alternatively in a blockchain-based database (e.g. BigchainDB). This problem is addressed in the document SG 10 2018 105 97U A1 addresses this issue, but the proposed solution uses smart contracts to issue and collect digitally signed (generic) certificates in an encrypted portfolio stored on a blockchain. This solution does not specifically address usage certificates, and its goal is not to track the history of an asset throughout its entire lifespan (e.g., to prove the asset's status or authenticity). Furthermore, the availability of the data used in issuing certificates must be ensured so that the certification system can issue certificates. The event-based history of an asset can be stored on a blockchain to make it easily traceable and to ensure authenticity when issuing a vehicle claim, as described in publication IN 202211069056 A. For the secure signing and distribution of digital documents, electronic signatures are stored on a blockchain, and the unused issue transaction procedure is used to ensure the authenticity and usage history of the signed documents, as described in publication TH 1901000305 A. None of the above solutions offer an automatic system for generating authentic usage certificates on demand, with the ability to transparently track an event-based battery history. Solutions exist for providing usage certificates to prove battery usage, however these solutions have the following limitations: Certificates are stored in a distributed database, which does not guarantee the authenticity or immutability of the certified document. This is a critical issue if historical data is altered and the history can only be validated using previous versions of the generated usage certificates. - Usage parameters are stored in a distributed storage system, which in turn does not guarantee either authenticity or immutability. - The mechanism that generates the usage certificate is not transparent to the end user insofar as the end user cannot verify either the authenticity of the data used to generate the usage certificate or the validity of the certification procedure. The objective of the present invention is to further improve the prior art. This objective is achieved by the features of the independent claims. Disclosure of the invention Advantages of the invention The inventive method with the characterizing features of the independent claims has the advantage that the method comprises the following steps: a) Collecting battery usage data that includes at least one of: Load, current, state of charge, maximum capacity, temperature, and Internal resistance of the battery; b) Estimating critical battery parameters based on the collected battery usage data, which includes at least one of: Health condition, stress factors to which the battery is exposed, and anomalies detected during battery operation; c) Storing the estimated critical parameters in a distributed ledger with a generated digital signature; d) Generating a battery usage certificate co