Li-Ion device categories
A lithium-ion battery is an combination of Base elements in serie and/or in parallel (XSYP). A battery falls into a Category which refers to its geometrical shape.
There are 4 Category levels.
Category level #1: cells
Cylindrical cells, pouch cells and prismatic cells fall into this first level. They are simple cells (1S1P).
| Main category | Cells | Cells | Cells |
| Category level | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Category | Cylindrical cell | Pouch cell | Prismatic cell |
| Base element | Cell | Cell | Cell |
 |  |  |
Category level #2: modules
Battery modules and Rack-mount modules fall into this second level. They are made from simple cells combined in serie and/or in parallel (XSYP). A rack-mount module is a battery module specially designed to be racked in order to save space (PVsyst will consider equally those 2 categories during the simulation). The base element of those batteries is the cell.
| Main category | Modules | Modules |
| Category level | 2 | 2 |
| Category | Battery module | Rack mount module |
| Base element | Cell | Cell |
 |  |
Category level #3: cabinets and racks
Battery modules and Rack-mount modules may be further combined in serie and/or in parallel to build higher voltage and/or higher capacity packages. Those packages will fall either into the cabinet category - when a battery modules is the base element of the package - or into the Rack category -when the base element is a rack-mount module (PVsyst will consider equally those 2 categories in the system). The base element is either the Battery module or the Rack-mount module.
| Main category | Cabinets & Racks | Cabinets & Racks |
| Category level | 3 | 3 |
| Category | Cabinet | Rack |
| Base element | Battery module | Rack mount module |
 |  |
Category level #4: the container
Once again, Cabinets and Racks may be further combined in serie and/or in parallel and then disposed into a container. The base element is either the Cabinets or the rack.
Containers are not considered as "components" in the PVsyst database: they will be specified as a number of racks in series/parallel in the framework of the system definition.
| Main category | Container | Container |
| Category level | 4 | 4 |
| Category | Container | Container |
| Base element | Cabinet | Rack |
 | |