On the Characterization of Ultracapacitor Banks Used for HEVs

The ultracapacitor has many applications in modern electrical systems and there is the potential for their use in hybrid electric vehicles. This paper presents a survey of ultracapacitor-based hybrid vehicles. The focus of this paper is to study the natural discharge of an ultracapacitor bank. A low-cost precise digital system was employed for this task. This paper investigates the effects of different parameters on the discharge behavior of an ultracapacitor bank. Extensive curve fitting of the experimental data was conducted to characterize the natural discharge behavior of ultracapacitors