DC-DC
Converter
Ultracapacitor
Battery Ultracapacitor
Pulse load
1
DIGEST Submitted to IEEE APEC 03, Feb 9-13, Miami, FL
10% duty, 11Amps). Table 1 lists the characteristics of the components in this system.. In order to protect the
battery, we limit the maximum battery output current to 2.4A and set the battery cutoff voltage at 2.5V/cell.
Fig. 2 Schematic in VTB and simulation result, solid line is load current, dash is
ultracapacitor current and dash-dot is battery current
Table 1 Components of passive hybrid
Component Array configuration Package Weight Package Volume Other
(Parallel Series) (g) (cm3)
Sony 21 84 138.4 1.4Ah/cell
US18650 (42g/cell 2) (69.2 cm3/cell Nominal 3.8V/cell
2) IMAX < 2.4A
VCutoff = 2.5V/cell
Maxwell 12 74 64.0 VMAX < 2.7V/cell
PC100 (37g/cell 2) (32 cm3/cell 2)
Pulse Load Ideal pulse load
For safety considerations the battery is operated with protection circuitry and that limits the battery current
to 2.4A. But the passive hybrid is able to supply peak currents up to 11 A, and a peak power of 41.8W (11A3.8V),
which is 2.3 times greater than the battery alone (22.4A3.8V=18.24W) can supply. However, the battery current
still has large variations and reaches the peak value at the end of each pulse. More comparisons between battery
alone and battery/capacitor hybrid can be found in Table 3.
VTB simulation
Fig.3 shows the VTB schematic of the active power source. The simulink block is a wrapper object that
allows a user to implement control algorithm in Matlab/Simulink and co-simulate with VTB interactively. Fig.3 also
shows the Simulink implementation of the PI controller for the DC-DC converter.
2
DIGEST Submitted to IEEE APEC 03, Feb 9-13, Miami, FL
Fig. 3 VTB schematic of active power source and its control algorithm implemented in
Matlab/Simulink
PC
dSPACE
(Matlab/Simulink)
DC/DC
Converter
Fig.4 Diagram of experimental system and the circuit of the DC/DC converter
Table 2 Specifications of active power source
Battery Pack (SonyUS18650) 2 series cells, totaling, 84 g, 138.4 cm3
Ultracapacitor Pack (Maxwell 2 series cells, totaling, 74 g, 64.0 cm3
PC100)
Pulse Load Agilent Technologies electronic load, Model 6060B
dSPACE dSPACE DS1103 PPC Controller Board
DC/DC Converter about 30g, 30 cm3
3
DIGEST Submitted to IEEE APEC 03, Feb 9-13, Miami, FL
Fig. 5 VTB simulation result: ultracapacitor voltage (left), current distribution (right) in
which dotted curve is for load current, solid is for ultracapacitor and dash is for converter
load side output current.
Experimental data is shown in Figs. 6 and 7. The average battery current is 0.472A; current ripple is 14mA
(0.478A-0.464A); and ultracapacitor voltage ripple is 0.37V (4.25V-3.88V);
Fig.7 Duty ratio of controller and (load-side) output current from the converter
An interesting phenomenon that can be seen in Figs.6 and 7 is that battery current actually decreases during
the high current impulses. We control the converter (load-side) output current to be constant and equal to the
average load current, during the pulse on time, the ultracapacitor terminal voltage drops which decreases the output
power of the converter, so the battery current actually decreases.
4
DIGEST Submitted to IEEE APEC 03, Feb 9-13, Miami, FL
III Conclusion
Table 3 shows comparisons among the three different kinds of power sources for a particular case of pulse
current discharge (period 5 seconds and duty ratio 10%). On the bases of mass density of power or volume density
of power, the active hybrid power source is clearly superior. (This assumes miniaturization of the controller from the
general-purpose controller that we used.)
Table 3. Comparison among three kinds of power source under specified test condition
Battery Alone Passive Batt/Cap Active Batt/Cap/Conv
Package 2 cells in parallel Battery: 2 parallel 1 series Battery: 1 parallel 2 series
Capacitor: 1 parallel 2 series Capacitor: 1 parallel 2 series
Weight (g) 84 158 188
Volume (cm3) 138 202 232
Maximum Power Capacity 18.2 41.8 132
(W)
Pulse Power Mass 217 264 702
Density (W/Kg)
Pulse Power Volume 0.132 0.207 0.570
Density (W/cm3)
Terminal Voltage 1.7V 1.7V < 1.47V
Variation (4.2V-2.5V) (4.2V-2.5V)
IV Reference
1. R.A. Dougal, S. Liu, L. Gao, M. Blackwelder, VTB for advanced power sources, JPS Proceedings:
Workshop on Advanced Battery Modeling, Arlington, VA, Aug 14-16, 2001
2. S. Liu, R.A. Dougal, R.E. White, Power and life extension of battery-ultracapacitor hybrids,
paper accepted on 14 Sep 2001 for IEEE Trans on Components and Packaging Technologies, Vol. 25, No.
1, pp. 120-131, March 2002.
3. Zheng, J.P. Jow, T.R. Ding, M.S., Hybrid power sources for pulsed current applications, IEEE
Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Vol. 37(1), pp. 288 - 292, Jan 2001
4. Brandhorst, H.W., Jr. Zheng Chen, Achieving a high pulse power system through engineering the battery-
capacitor combination, The Sixteenth Annual Battery Conference on Applications and Advances, pp. 153-
156, Jan. 2001
5. Lijun Gao, Shengyi Liu, Roger A. Dougal , Dynamic lithium ion battery model for system simulation,
accepted on July 2002 for IEEE Trans on Components and Packaging
6. A. F. Burke, J. R. Miller, Test Procedures for high energy density, electrochemical capacitors, The
Electrochemical Society Proceedings, Vol. 95-29, pp. 280-297, 1995
7. A. Yoshida, K. Imoto, H. Yodeda and A. Nishino, An Electric Double-Layer Capacitor with High
Capacitance and Low Resistance, IEEE Trans. Comp., Hybrid, Manuf. Tech., Vol. 15, No.1, pp. 133-138,
1992.
8. B. E. Conway, Electrochemical Supercapacitors: Scientific Fundamentals and Technological Applications,
Kluwer-Plenum, New York, 1999