Jul. 14, 2025
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) looking to power mid-sized to large non-road mobile machinery (NRMM), electric transportation, and other equipment face the challenge of outfitting the products with larger batteries and more powerful chargers. But these machines often contend with space limitations due to their compact designs.
CH Tech are exported all over the world and different industries with quality first. Our belief is to provide our customers with more and better high value-added products. Let's create a better future together.
That said, OEMS can easily overcome spatial challenges by stacking chargers—providing greater charging power and achieving faster charging times. Below, we’ll break down how stackable charging works, its benefits, and additional considerations OEMs need to know.
Stackable charging enables OEMs to flexibly achieve minimum charging power requirements for their machines to meet operators’ needs via multiple units. Because mid- and large-sized NRMM generally require more power and larger batteries, OEMs must choose between three options for charging solutions:
The first option is anything but a solution and not viable. And the compact designs of mid-sized and large NRMM generally prohibit the second option—accommodating a singular charger capable of meeting the machine’s requirements might necessitate a complete systems reconfiguration.
Instead, OEMs can leverage stackable charging to place multiple chargers either directly together (if space allows) or in parallel throughout the machine.
OEMs can easily determine how many on-board chargers they need to stack to meet machines’ power requirements with a simple equation:
Battery size (Wh) = Charging time (h) x Charging power (W)
So, OEMs merely need to divide their machines’ battery size by how long charging should take—generally between 8 and 12 hours (i.e., “overnight”) at a maximum. Then, divide the total charging power required by an individual unit’s output to determine how many must be installed.
For example, each XV charger produced by Delta-Q Technologies can provide 3.3 kW of charging power. Therefore, an 8 Wh battery would require a stack or parallel series of three chargers.
Stackable charging depends on the battery management system (BMS), charger software, and a CAN bus communications protocol (i.e., CANopen or SAE J).
One of the stacked chargers must be designated as the “primary charger” by installing a jumper wire on the COMM connector that transmits CAN bus data. This allows all charge management to function through the primary charger, such as:
This integrated operation requires the BMS to identify the stacked or parallel units as a single charger, with “secondary” chargers transparent to the CAN system (i.e., not transmitting data). However, this system also supports seamless swapping between primary and secondary chargers if needed, as only the jumper wire connection needs to be changed.
Aside from scalable charging power, stackable charging provides OEMs with benefits such as flexible configurations, charger redundancy, and better margin opportunities.
Multiple chargers inherently provide OEMs’ design and engineering teams with greater flexibility for systems configuration. And for compact NRRM, this flexibility is crucial. Placing a single large charger on-board may not be feasible if other systems can’t be reconfigured.
However, it’s significantly easier to create smaller pockets of space within machines’ designs. For example, rather than needing to find cubic-inches (~19.5L), OEMs can utilize three separate spaces of roughly 400 cubic-inches (~6.5L) to provide equivalent charging performance.
Multiple chargers provide NRMM with backup options should any individual units fail. With one charger out of commission, charging times will be slower. However, operators and fleet managers can still restore batteries to full capacity—either enabling work to continue on job sites or charging the machine enough to facilitate transportation for servicing.
This redundancy is especially crucial for operations that may place machines in work locations further removed from easy access (e.g., agriculture and outdoor power equipment (OPE)), as field calls for servicing quickly become expensive.
Stacking multiple chargers allows OEMs to deliver performance operators and fleet managers will be more willing to invest in.
Providing different battery or charger options for more range or faster charging, respectively, traditionally adds inventory management and configuration challenges (if using different charger models). And these may prove more troublesome than the obvious upsell opportunities different performance ranges create.
However, if OEMs design and engineer a machine to support multiple battery chargers, they can still benefit from those upsell opportunities. For example, suppose a machine requires a 3 kW charger but provides space to support up to two more units. With minimal complexity, that same machine can be sold as three different SKUs with varying performance levels. And because they all rely on the same charger, there are no inventory management issues to contend with.
Alternatively, even if minimum power requirements don’t necessitate larger or more chargers, OEMs can achieve substantial performance advantages over competitors via stacked chargers and the faster charging capabilities they provide.
OEMs considering a stackable charging system should keep the following considerations in mind when seeking charger partners:
Delta-Q Technologies provides multiple chargers capable of stacking or parallel configurations, including the XV, the RC Series, and the ICL Series.
The XV—which recently entered full production—will provide machines with roughly 10 kW when stacking the maximum three units, and the liquid-cooled option supports greater configuration flexibility as it doesn’t limit mounting options. And with EVSE compatibility, the XV’s charging accessibility suits myriad applications, from NRMM to e-Mobility.
Contact Delta-Q Technologies to learn more about how stacked charger configurations can power your machines and devices to new performance levels.
The battery cell used stacking technology has the advantages of small internal resistance, long life, high space utilization, and high energy density after group. In terms of battery performance, compared with the winding technology, the lamination stacking technology can increase the energy density of the battery by 5%, increase the cycle life by 10% and reduce the cost by 5% under the same conditions.
For more information, please visit Stackable Battery(tr,uk,es).
The lamination & stacking process is a lithium polymer battery manufacturing process in which a positive electrode, a negative electrode is cut into small pieces and a separator is laminated to form a small cell, and a single cell is stacked in parallel to form a large cell. However, there are different ways to stacking process. Let’s watch a video from Scienceviz: [embed]https://youtu.be/8WEGVxliKJ8[/embed] As the video shows, there are four stacking processes, and Grepow uses the Z-Folding with single electrodes method, which is less complicated and increased the pass rate of the battery.
As I mentioned before, the lamination stacking technology can increase the energy density, cycle life, and reduce the cost. Then I will compare the advantages and disadvantages of the stacking and winding process from different aspects.
1. The internal resistance of the battery is different
The cell produced by the stacking process has a lower internal resistance and a higher winding internal resistance. Because the winding cell is usually a single pole, the laminated cell can be seen as a multi-pole type, which greatly reduces its internal resistance. The difference in internal resistance causes the difference in heat generation between the finished battery during the charge and discharge cycle and the decay of the battery capacity. It is obvious that the battery capacity of the stacked battery is attenuated more slowly.
2. Different battery life
As the charge and discharge cycle continues, heat is generated inside the battery, which in turn affects the temperature of the battery. For the laminated battery, the internal temperature distribution is relatively uniform, and the winding battery has a single-direction heat transfer mode between the pole piece and the diaphragm, which causes the temperature gradient distribution phenomenon to be serious, and the internal high temperature and external appearance occur the low-temperature phenomenon. The uneven temperature distribution leads to the inactivation of the live material at the high-temperature position during the charging and discharging process, and the function of deintercalation lithium ions cannot be performed, thereby affecting the rapid decay of other locations and affecting the performance of the battery.
The temperature distribution of stacking and winding cell (The picture from Internet. All rights reserved)
3. The stress inside the cell is different
Two ways of making the battery have different mechanical characteristics. The laminated area of the laminated core electrode diaphragm has the same force area, no specific point of stress concentration, and the battery does not have sharp damage in a certain part during use. At the edge of the winding cell, stress is concentrated. According to the previous experience of battery disassembly analysis, the pole piece bend is more prone to micro-short circuit, electric breakdown and lithium deposition. The stress concentration point is the primary location for battery deactivation, which also results in reduced cycle life of the winding battery.
4. Battery rate performance is different
The stacking process is equivalent to the parallel connection of multi-pole pieces, which makes it easier to discharge large currents in a short time, which is beneficial to the rate performance of the battery. The winding process is just the opposite, with a single tab causing a slightly lower rate performance.
5. Different battery capacity density
The laminated battery has a higher capacity density because its internal space is more fully utilized. In contrast, the winding battery has a circular shape on both sides of the battery and the last two layers of the coil occupy a certain thickness, so the capacity density is low.
The safety is also different, from the aspects of internal resistance, stress, temperature distribution, etc., the winding battery with high internal resistance and inconsistence temperature are less safe.
1. The film production complexity is different
The winding process is simpler and has been operated, making it easy for automated manufacturing. Most companies currently on the market use a form of winding. The stacking process is very cumbersome and the pass rate of the pole piece is very low. For a winding core, only two knives at the beginning and the end are required, and each piece of the laminated piece requires four knives. The quality of the pole piece (section, burr, etc.) is difficult to maintain a high degree of consistency, which affects the ultimate performance of the battery.
2. The complexity of battery manufacturing is different
Winding cells are easy to operate and can be completed quickly, either semi-automatic or fully automatic. The stacking process is highly complex, manual operation is time-consuming and laborious, and automation is difficult to industrialize due to equipment problems. In addition, in the quality control of the battery core, the winding type is easier to control, and the stacking type is difficult to achieve good consistency due to the cumbersome process steps. In short, it is necessary to select a suitable process according to its own conditions and battery requirements. After the process change, the pole piece cutting and the subsequent welding and assembly need to be greatly changed.
Film Cutting: The coiled lithium battery is convenient for cutting and has a high pass rate. Each cell only needs to perform one slitting of the positive and negative electrodes, which is difficult and has a low probability of producing defective products. The laminated lithium battery is cumbersome and has a low pass rate. Each battery has dozens of small pieces, each of which has four cut faces, and the slicing process is easy to produce bad punching, so the probability of producing a pole piece and burr is greatly increased for a single battery.
Grepow has the 0.6-second high-speed stacking technology production equipment, which can realize mass production of stacking square batteries, and the stacking efficiency of single-chip is about 1.0 seconds/chip.
Keep an eye on Grepow's official blog, and we'll regularly update industry-related articles to keep you up-to-date on the battery industry.
Grepow: https://www.grepow.com/
Grepow Blog: https://www.grepow.com/blog.html
Grepow Launch Rapid Battery Sampling Service
Advantages of pouch cell battery trend and opportunities
The company is the world’s best All In One Power System supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
Previous: Top 5 Benefits of High-Quality Lithium Battery Cells
Next: How to Choose the Best Lithium Marine Batteries in 2024
If you are interested in sending in a Guest Blogger Submission,welcome to write for us!
All Comments ( 0 )