Flow Battery Control System

With Honeywell

For my senior design project at UNC Charlotte, I’m working with engineers from Honeywell and Duke Energy to develop a control and monitoring system for Iron Flow batteries. These batteries are designed for long-duration energy storage, and our goal is to help customers integrate them into their existing infrastructure more easily.

I’m focusing on the embedded control system. Using an Arduino and other electrical components, we’re building a prototype that can monitor battery data and respond to remote commands. The goal is to show how a system like this could help manage battery performance in real time with minimal technical setup required from the user.

This project brings together my interests in embedded systems, hardware programming, and energy technology. It’s also a great step toward my broader goal of working on secure, mission-driven engineering solutions.

Integration Framework for Honeywell’s Iron Flow Battery

Control System Logic Diagram

This system-level logic diagram demonstrates the control system's role using a flow chart:
-Boots and connects to sensors and server
-Reads battery data and sends to server
-User can send remote commands
-State machine selects Charging, Discharging, or Fault
-Controls relays based on state
-Fault state disables both relays and triggers alert

The GitHub repository contains the C++ implementation of the state machine.

Duke Energy Solar Site

We also had the opportunity to visit a solar site and see their battery system in action. It was great to see firsthand how energy storage works and how these systems help improve grid reliability and sustainability. Looking forward to applying what we learned as we develop our own interconnect system for our own iron flow battery for Honeywell.