Design and Control of a Supercapacitor Storage System for Traction Applications

The storage system in this paper is made of supercapacitors. The main goal is to ensure an efficient energy management in a series hybrid vehicle, even if braking resistors are still needed. Design considerations are discussed. In particular the influence of the inductor resistance on the system stability is described. A Maximum Control Structure is then deduced from the Energetic Macroscopic Representation of the storage system. Comparisons between experimentation and simulation are presented in order to highlight the influence of the inductor resistor. Experiments are then carried out on a normal operating cycle.