Enhanced aging model for supercapacitors taking into account power cycling: Application to the sizing of an Energy Storage System in a Direct Wave Energy Converter

This paper proposes an original model for supercapacitors that takes into account both calendar aging and cycling aging. This model is based on a series of recent experiments conducted in various research laboratories on the same technology (Maxwell Technology) and serves to represent the degradation of Equivalent Series Resistance and capacitance. We show that an accurate aging model is critical to the design of an Energy Storage System that optimizes the economic life cycle cost. Such an optimization is especially applicable for smoothing in offshore systems like Direct Wave Energy Converters, which require both cost reduction and high reliability. The influence of an aging model in the sizing process is investigated towards the end of this paper.