Supercapacitor enhanced battery traction systems - concept evaluation

Abstract

This review paper gives an overview of state-of-the-art technology regarding supercapacitors, briefy discusses the aspect of supercapacitor balancing and compares and assesses two system designs incorporating supercapacitors, batteries and in one case with an interconnected converter. Supercapacitors offer a high power density and long life cycle and could improve a battery-only setup subjected to peak loads. An electric kart test setup will be used to evaluate a simple direct parallel connection between the batteries and the supercapacitor bank. Measurements on a more advanced setup, incorporating an interconnected converter between the batteries and supercapacitors, will illustrate the effect of such an implementation compared to a plain parallel connected setup. © 2008 WEV Journal.