A comprehensive review of reconfigurable battery systems: Architecture, control, and reliability perspectives

Reconfigurable battery systems (RBS) dynamically adjust the topology of battery packs to enable flexible connection and isolation of individual cells or modules, thereby providing a promising approach to improving the energy efficiency, safety, and reliability of electric vehicles and energy storage systems. This paper presents a systematic review of recent research progress on RBS, with a focus on representative topologies, including switch-matrix-based, switch-bypass-based, and modular cascaded configurations, along with their performance characteristics. The development trends of emerging reconfigurable topologies are also discussed. From the perspective of control and optimization, recent advances in RBS are summarized at three levels: energy management, thermal management, and charge–discharge control, covering the application of rule-based control, model predictive control, and deep reinforcement learning methods. In addition, fault diagnosis techniques and fault-tolerant mechanisms for switching devices and battery cells in RBS are reviewed. Finally, the major challenges associated with the practical implementation of RBS are identified, and potential directions for future research are outlined.