Electrical – Relation between battery cell capacity & internal resistance

batteriescapacitylithium ionresistance

I'm trying to design a large battery pack, that should provide a given amount of power, with a reasonable amount of heat dissipations. To do so, I have three degrees of freedom:

  • indidividual cell capacity
  • number of cells in parallel
  • number of cells in series

Given an internal resistance, I was thinking of having a lot of parallel branches with cells of low capacity, in order to lower the current (and thus the heat dissipations in RIĀ²).

However, I heard that the product of internal resistance times capacity is constant, meaning that internal resistance increases when capacity decreases.

Is that true? I could not find any confirmations on the net.
Is there a more accurate relationship between these two?

Thank you for your help!

Best Answer

internal resistance increases when capacity decreases

these parameters are not directly connected.

Is more correct to say that internal resistance is related to battery discharge current. Indeed, a battery with higher discharge current will have a smaller internal resistance.

For example, a LiPo prismatic cell of 3000mAh used to have a bigger discharge current than a cylindrical LiIon with the same capacity.