Implementation of a multiple input DC-DC converter for Electric Vehicle power system

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are being shown as a global solution in the path for reducing the carbon dioxide emissions and the avoidance of petrol energy problems. Actually, the Energy Storage Systems available are the great obstacle to a faster entrance of the EVs in the market. In fact, EVs applications need sources with high specific energy and high specific power, and currently, there are no available sources with these both characteristics. Consequently, in order to increase the vehicle autonomy and performance, the concept of power sources hybridization has been a study subject in EVs area. However, this approach requires a higher number of power electronics systems to allow multiple sources management. Therefore, the present paper presents an implementation of a multiple DC-DC converter topology connecting batteries and supercapacitors (SCs). The DC-DC converter is based on a commercial three arm Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) inverter and it is controlled by a Compact Reconfigurable Input Output (C-RIO), Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based, from National Instruments.