Battery-Ultracapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage System to Increase Battery Life Under Pulse Loads

This work presents a battery-ultracapacitor hybrid energy storage system (HESS) for pulsed loads (PL) in which ultracapacitors (UCs) run the pulse portion of the load while the battery powers the constant part of the load. Energy stored in UC depends upon the square of its voltage that’s why an active parallel hybrid topology with two bidirectional converters (BDC) is employed here that assigns UC a separate BDC to control its voltage between an upper and lower limit as per-requisite. The other converter is connected between the battery and DC-link to provide a distinct control of the battery. A MATLAB/Simulink model is developed to minimize the factors affecting the battery life such as capacity rate (C-rate), depth of discharge (DoD), and temperature rise due to PL by controlling the operating modes of the BDCs in which voltage of the UC and state of charge (SoC) of the battery are control variables. A constant output voltage across the load is maintained through feedback control. A detailed comparative analysis, among battery-alone, UC-alone, and battery-UC hybrid modes is performed which signifies that the proposed system is 55% lower in cost than its counterparts. The analysis shows that the proposed HESS reduces 50% capacity of a lead-acid battery, which is otherwise necessary to withstand the pulsating loads. Moreover, the performance of the HESS is also tested for electric vehicle (EV) load by hybridizing a high-voltage lithium-ion battery pack with a UC bank which confirms its suitability for EV applications.