A Physics-Informed Reinforcement Learning Approach for Degradation-Aware Long-Term Charging Optimization in Batteries

Batteries degrade with usage and continuous cycling. This aging is typically reflected through the resistance growth and the capacity fade of battery cells. Over the years, various charging methods have been presented in the literature that proposed current profiles in order to enable optimal, fast, and/or health-conscious charging. However, very few works have attempted to make the ubiquitous Constant Current Constant Voltage (CCCV) charging protocol adaptive to the changing battery health as it cycles. This work aims to address this gap and proposes a framework that optimizes the constant current part of the CCCV protocol adapting to long-term battery degradation. Specifically, a physics-informed Reinforcement Learning (RL) approach has been used that not only estimates a key battery degradation mechanism, namely, Loss of Active Material (LAM), but also adjusts the current magnitude of CCCV as a result of this particular degradation. The proposed framework has been implemented by combining PyBamm, an open-source battery modeling tool, and Stable-baselines where the RL agent was trained using a Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) network. Simulation results show the potential of the proposed framework for enhancing the widely used CCCV protocol by embedding physics information in RL algorithm. A comparative study of this proposed agent has also been discussed with 2 other charging protocols generated by a non-physics-based RL agent and a constant CCCV for all the cycles.