A Development of an Energy Storage System for Hybrid Electric Vehicles Using Supercapacitor

Jin-uk Jeong, Hyeoun-dong Lee, Chul-soo Kim, Hang-Seok Choi, Bo-Hyung Cho Abstract
An energy storage system for improving performance of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) is presented. The hybrid power system consists of batteries and supercapacitors. The supercapacitor contributes to the rapid energy recovery associated with regenerative braking and to the rapid energy consumption associated with acceleration in electric vehicles. This power system allows the acceleration and deceleration of the vehicle with minimal loss of energy and minimizes the stress of the main batteries by reducing high power demands away from the batteries. It also leads to longer battery life by extracting energy at a slower average rate. The total weight of hybrid system is lighter than that applied only batteries, so that the efficiency of vehicle is increased. In this paper, the equivalent model of supercapacitor is included. This model can be used in simulating for automotive power systems, e.g. the voltage response and energy efficiency. The soft switching bidirectional DC-DC converter is used to connect the supercapacitor with the battery for the controlled instantaneous electric power flow. The hybrid power system is analyzed and verified by experimental results from the prototype system. Copyright 2002 EVS19

Keywords: DC-DC, HEV (hybrid electric vehicle), regenerative braking, supercapacitor,

energy storage, Buck-Boost.

1. Introduction
The supercapacitor can not only be charged and discharged more than one million times but also be stored with ten times more energy than conventional electrolytic capacitors. Usually, the battery has the limitation on a life cycle, and a prompt storage and consumption of stored energy. It is due to the basic nature of chemical reaction of a battery. In contrast, the supercapacitor has the merits of a rapid charge and discharge of energy and a longer life cycle, because of electrostatic nature of capacitor rather than chemical reaction. Besides, a supercapacitor has extremely high capacitance with superior durability and maintenance-free characteristic[1,2]. It is tendency that the applicable field of supercapacitor is gradually promoted by virtue of its merits. Specially, the usefulness is more and more increased as an energy buffer in developing eco-friendly and low/zero-emission vehicles, such as Electric Vehicle(EV), Hybrid Electric Vehicle(HEV) or Fuel Cell Vehicle(FCV) etc. Figure 1 presents a simple block diagram that the supercapacitor is applied to electric vehicle/hybrid electric vehicle system. As shown in Fig. 1, it can be expected that the improvement of system efficiency and the life extension of the energy storage system by using batteries as a main storage and supercapacitor as an assistant one. At this time, the supercapacitor is responsible for the transient demand of power and the battery is responsible for the constant requirement of energy[3,4]. In this paper, the electrical characteristic of supercapacitor is looked into and the electrical equivalent model on the basis of the investigation is proposed. The validity of the proposed model is proved in that the simulation results are fitted well to actual supercapacitor impedance characteristic over all test frequency range. In order to control the energy stored in supercapacitor bank in real-time manner, the storage system structure and specifications are investigated. And the modular configuration of bidirectional DC/DC converter is studied. With the proto-type of DC/DC converter and supercapacitor bank, the experiments in which electric energy can be controlled through regulating the supercapacitor bank voltage are conducted.

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Battery

MOT

INVERTER

ENG DC/DC CONVERTER

Super-capacitor

Motoring Regenerative Braking

Figure 1: Electric vehicle/hybrid electric vehicle system using supercapacitors.

2. System Composition
2.1. The modeling of supercapacitor
Since supercapactor is mainly introduced to the applications requiring high-dynamic performance, the voltage and current transient behavoir of the supercapacitor should be taken into account. Therefore, for energy storage system design and its control, it is important to make an electrical equivalent circuit for supercapacitor in detail. Even if supercapacitor can be modeled as a conventional capacitor, it is insufficient to use the reduced model using a resistance and a capacitance connected in series considering high-dynamic behavior. In this paper, new equivalent circuit of supercapacitor, as shown in Fig. 2, is obtained for the supercapacitor of PC2500TM of Maxwell Technologies, Inc(MTI). The specifications of PC2500TM are listed in Table 1. According to voltage, load current, temperature, etc, the resistances and capacitances in the proposed equivalent circuit are possibly varied. The modeling error caused by operating condition, however, can be minimized by modifying the value of each element in the proposed equivalent circuit. Figure 3 shows the validity of the proposed equivalent circuit. The supercapacitor impedance (magnitude and phase) is plotted in this figure, where dotted and solid curve are experimental and simulated results, respectively. It can be seen that the simulated results are fitted well to actual supercapacitor impedance characteristic over all test frequency region.

Table 1: Specifications of supercapacitor( PC2500TM ) [1] parameter capacitance ESR @ 25oC DC 1kHz voltage(continuous) voltage(peak) rated current weight volume specification 2700 1 0.55 2.5 2.7 625 725 0.6 unit F m m V V A g

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ESR2 ESR1 Cs Co EPR

Figure 2: Proposed electrical equivalent circuit of supercapacitor.

Figure 3: Impedance characteristic of supercapacitor( PC2500TM ) [1].

2.2. Energy storage system using supercapacitor

2.2.1. System specifications To control the energy stored in supercapacitor bank, it is need that the voltage of the supercapacitor bank should be controlled. If not, the supercapacitor voltage depends on the battery voltage, so that there is no possibility to control the energy stored in supercapacitor bank. Thus, DC/DC converter is indispensable to regulate the bank voltage level. Moreover, because the current can flow to supercapacitor when the supercapacitor is charged and the current can flow from supercapacitor when the supercapacitor is discharged, the DC/DC converter has to have a bi-directional nature. Figure 4 shows the system configuration with battery pack and supercapacitor bank as an energy storage. The DC/DC converter is on boost-mode operation as the inverter supplies traction power to the motor. On the other hands, the DC/DC converter is on buck-mode operation as the regenerative energy come to supercapacitor bank.

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Battery 120-180V

Super-capacitor 40-69V

Inverter

Boost mode (Motoring)

Battery 120-180V

Super-capacitor 40-69V

Inverter

Buck mode (Regenerating)

Figure 4: System configuration of the supercapacitor implemented.

Table 2: Specification of system. item supercapacitor voltage battery voltage electric power capacity efficiency operating temperature specification 40 ~ 69 Vdc 120 ~ 180 Vdc (nominal 150 V) motoring : PMot = 12kW, I Max = 80A, 5 sec generating : PGen = 9kW, I Max = -60A, 10 sec (ref : battery voltage 150 V ) more than 90% -30 ~ 85C

From the required specification of Table 2, the number of supercapacitor cell is designed to be 30, on the basis that the maximum voltage of each supercapacitor cell is 2.3V (92% of continuous voltage rating), and the minimum voltage of each supercapacitor cell is 1.25V (50% of continuous voltage rating). As a consequence, the capacitance of the supercapacitor bank used in this study becomes 2700/30=90F and equivalent series resistance (ESR) 1m30=30m, to make the maximum stored energy become 210kJ. The the total volume and weight of the supercapacitor bank is 18l and 22kg, respectively.

2.2.2. The topology of bi-directional DC/DC converter There can be lots of converter topology for realizing a bi-directional DC/DC converter; single-stage buck/boost type and full-bridge type as a typical one. Full-bridge type topology has merits compared to single-stage buck/boost type topology. 1) Electrical isolation between input and output is guaranteed. 2) Higher boost ratio can be implemented. 3) System protection is possible when output stage short take place. From these facts, full-bridge type topology is employed in this study, in spite that the full-bridge type topology is somewhat bulky, requires more components rather than singlestage buck/boost type.

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Buck operation

Boost operation

Lf
Sc1 Sa Sc4 Sb1 Sb4

Vc

Llk

Vb

40 - 69V
Super-capacitor Sc3 Ch Sb3 Sb2 Sc2

120180V
Battery

Low-voltage side Current-fed type

High-voltage side

Voltage-fed type

Figure 5: The bi-directional DC/DC converter(full-bridge type topology). As shown in Fig. 5, the bi-directional full-bridge topology DC/DC converter is operated on boost mode at the time electric power is supplied from supercapacitor stage (low voltage stage) to battery stage (high voltage stage), and on buck mode at the time electric power is absorbed from battery stage to supercapacitor stage. Because the supercapacitor stage of the DC/DC converter has low voltage level, a current control is necessary in the cause of reducing currents burden on semiconductors. At the battery stage of the DC/DC converter, voltage control is necessary to match to DC bus voltage of the inverter. Also, soft switching technique of zero voltage-zero current switching is applied to this system for improving the DC/DC converter efficiency.

2.3. Bi-directional DC/DC converter with supercapacitor bank

2.3.1. The unit module design of bi-directional DC/DC converter In the case that a 10kW DC/DC converter is designed as a single module, there are lots of difficulties such as limitation on a selection of switching device, DC/DC converter volume, and so on. For this reason, the multiple module type is more profitable, which could be supplying electric power to inverter stage through parallel operation of each module. After considering various conditions such as complexity of system, size, efficiency, and the required specification as listed in Table 2, the overall DC/DC converter is made up of 6 unit module as shown in Fig. 6. Accordingly, the power capacity of each module in boost and buck mode operation is 12kW/6 = 2kW and 9kW/6 = 1.5kW, respectively. At the same time that the switching frequency of system is established by 60kHz, after considering the switching device voltage, current capacity, and transformer size, etc. Table 3 shows specification of converters main parts which is designed by this research.

Figure 6: Proto type of DC/DC converter unit module.

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Table 3: Power stage design of converter unit module item MOSFET IGBT transformer inductor clamp capacitor filter capacitor fuse fuse symbol Sc1-Sc4, Sa Sb1-Sb4 T1 Lf Ch Cf F1 F2 device IXFN180N20 SGL50N60RUFD PQ5050 PQ5050 35uF/250V 220uF/400V, #2 100A/100V 25A/500V note 180A, 200V Rds(on):10m 50A, 600V Vce : 2.2V Nb : 9 turns Nc : 6 turns N : 15 turns Parallel Connection Low Voltage Stage High voltage stage

2.3.2. The design of supercapacitor bank A supercapacitor energy storage unit will necessarily consist of many cells in series to attain the required system voltage. The issue of importance in accessing the feasibility of the supercapacitor bank is cell-to-cell voltage variability. At the moment the capacitors connected in series are charged, each capacitor voltage can vary according to its capacitance. Therefore, the bigger the difference of each capacitance is, the larger the voltage difference of each capacitor is. With the large deviation of capacitance, the capacitor of small capacitance may be damaged due to the excessive voltage over rating. The capacitance of each capacitor can be calculated from voltage measured when the voltage of capacitor bank is reach to 56V. After charging and discharging several times to recognize a deviation of capacitance in each capacitor, the capacitance of each capacitor, as shown in Fig. 7, is estimated. In contrast to the case of pre-charge stage in which the voltage of each capacitor appears to function of capacitance, Equivalent Parallel Resistance (EPR) decides voltage of each capacitor at steady state. Internal EPR among the capacitors has big deviation. If the capacitor is used for a long times, the capacitor having big internal EPR can be damaged to pass over rated voltage. Therefore, as connecting on the terminal of supercapacitor with balancing resistor bigger than internal EPR, we can keep each capacitor's voltage evenly. In this research, the balancing resistor is chosen as the result of considering voltage balance and power consumption among the terminals of capacitor[5]. Figure 8 shows the supercapacitor bank, in which each capacitor is connected by using copper bus bar to reduce the ohmic resistance of the connecting wire. Figure 9 shows an electric circuit diagram of a supercapacitor with cell balancing resistor and a fault detection branch. Supercapacitor fault detection branch has LED and driving resistor, so that the damaged cell is easily detected without a timeconsuming job to find out which a cell is broken down. 2.3.3. Efficiency estimation of DC/DC converter unit module Although the calculation of DC/DC converter efficiency must consider various kinds of factors, the efficiency can be calculated by considering conduction loss and switching loss of power switching semi-conductor(MOSFET, IGBT) because the conduction loss and switching loss are mainly responsible for the DC/DC converter loss. The DC/DC converter have efficiency of 88.6% for boost mode operation in full load condition, if we calculate efficiency of converter considering factors, such as conduction loss of rectifier diode, conduction and switching losses of MOSFET(switching device). In buck mode operation, the efficiency of DC/DC Converter is about 90% if we calculate efficiency of converter considering factors, such as conduction loss of rectifier-diode, conduction and switching losses of IGBT(switching device).

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3500 3000 2500 capacitance 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

Figure 7: Estimation of capacitance per each capacitor cell.

(a)

(b)

Figure 8: (a) Supercapacitor bank. (b) Cell balancing and fault detection circuit hardware of supercapacitor(An enlarged photograph of (a)).

Super capacitor

Balancing resistor

Figure 9: The cell balancing and fault detective circuit of supercapacitor.

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3. Experimental results and discussion

3.1. Basic boost/buck mode experiment of bi-directional DC/DC converter
3.1.1. Boost mode operation In boost mode experiment, the supercapacitor bank in fully charged condition plays a role of an input source and resistor load is connected to output terminal(high voltage stage)of bi-directional DC/DC converter. Thus, electric power is supplied from supercapacitor to resistor load. The bi-directional DC/DC converter performs a boosting control of supercapacitor voltage. Figure 10 shows the experimental result of boost mode operation, where each waveform means the gating signal(Sc1Sc4,Sa) of each switch and current waveform( I lk ) at high voltage side of transformer. 3.1.2. Buck mode operation In buck mode test, the bi-directional DC/DC converter supplies electric power to resistor load that is connected to output stage(low voltage stage) of the DC/DC converter. External DC power supply is introduced for this experiment and plays a role of high voltage input source. Figure 11 shows voltage( Vlk ) and current waveform( I lk ) of the transformer. As shown in Fig. 11, we can confirm Zero-Voltage Switching(ZVS) operation from experimental result.

Figure 10: An experimental result of boost mode operation.

Figure 11: An experimental result of buck mode operation.

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3.2. Experiment of electric power exchange between supercapacitor bank and battery pack
After connecting supercapacitor bank(low voltage) and battery pack(high voltage) on both stages of the bi-directional DC/DC converter, the test of bi-directional electric power flow is conducted. In this experiment, the bi-directional DC/DC converter is in current control mode. The current flowing to/from supercapacitor through boost inductor is controlled, so that the energy stored in supercapacitor bank is charged/discharged. The DC/DC converter receives a starting signal and a current control command from high-level controller. Figure 12 and 13 show the experimental results for the boost and buck mode operation, repectively. In both boost mode and buck mode experiment, the current command is 35A and maintains for 25 seconds. The negative sign of the current command means discharging supercapacitor bank(Fig. 12) and the positive sign of that means charging supercapacitor bank(Fig. 13). Under full load condition, the efficiency of the bi-directional DC/DC converter in boost mode and buck mode experiments is measured as 86% and 88%, respectively, which corresponds well with the calculation results except a small error of 2%.

Figure 12: Experimental waveforms of boost mode operation(discharge of supercapacitor bank).

Figure 13: Experimental waveforms of buck mode operation(charge of supercapacitor bank).

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4. Conclusion
This paper deals with an optimal design of energy storage system using supercapacitor and modular development of bi-directional DC/DC converter. For a high-dynamic energy storage system design and its control, an electrical equivalent circuit modeling of supercapacitor using passive elements is performed. The proposed supercapacitor model can be used in the simulation of automotive power systems with respect of a power delivery and energy consumption. The validity of the proposed model is proved in that the simulation results are fitted well to actual supercapacitor impedance characteristic over all test frequency range. In order to control the energy stored in supercapacitor bank in real-time manner, the storage system structure and specifications are investigated. And the modular configuration of bi-directional DC/DC converter is studied. With the proto-type of DC/DC converter and supercapacitor bank, the experiments in which electric energy can be controlled through regulating the supercapacitor bank voltage are conducted. Currently, the algorithm deciding how much electric energy is taken from or charged to the supercapacitor bank for parallel type hybrid electric vehicle is under development stage.

5. References
[1] [2] Maxwell. Ultracapacitors Data Sheets and technical information for PC2500TM, [Maxwell Publications]. Thomas Dietrich,UltraCaps-A new Energy Storage Device for Peak Power Applications, 18th Internati -onal Electric Vehicle Symposium, Berlin, Germany, October 2001, paper PP244 [on CDROM] B.J.Arnet, and L.P.Haines,Combining Ultracapacitors with Lead-Acid Batt -eries, 17th International Electric Vehicle Symposium, Montreal, Canada, October 2000, paper 2B-2 [on CD-ROM] Burke,A.F. and Miller,M.,Update of Ultracapacitor Technology and Hybrid Vehicle Applications: Passenger Cars and Transit Buses,18th International Electric Vehicle Symposium, Berlin, Germany, October 2001, paper PP044 [on CD-ROM] S. Buller, E. Karden, D. Kok, R.W. De Doncker, Simulation of Super capacitors in highly dynamic Applications, 18th International Electric Vehicle Symposium, Berlin, Germany, October 2001, paper PP056 [on CD-ROM]

[3] [4]

[5]

6. Affiliation
Jin-uk Jeong R & D Division for Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors Corporation, 772-1, Changduk-Dong, Whasung-Si, Kyunggi-Do, 445-850, Korea Phone: +82-31-369-7244, Fax: +82-31-369-6299, E-mail: jinuk@hyundai-motor.com He received a M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Kyung-pook National University, Taegu, Korea, in 2001. Since 2001, he has been with Hyundai Motor Company as a Research Engineer. His current research interests are control system for electric and hybrid electirc vehicle. Hyeoun-dong Lee Phone: +82-31-369-7243, Fax: +82-31-369-6299, E-mail : dong@hyundai-motor.com He received a M.S and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Since 1999, he has been with Hyundai Motor Company as a Senior Research Engineer. His current research interests are developments of electric motor drives, power conversions and their controls for electric and hybrid electric vehicle.

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Chul-soo Kim Phone: +82-31-369-7240, Fax: +82-31-369-6299, E-mail : kimcs@hyundai-motor.com He was born in Korea in 1957, and received M.S and Ph.D degrees in mechanical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, Korea, in 1982 and 1988, respectively. Since 1988, he has been with Hyundai Motor Company as a team manager, and took a part of developing the EV, HEV and FCEV program. His current research interests are developments of the pure, engine hybrid and fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle. Hang-Seok Choi Seoul National University, Korea Phone: +82-2-880-1785, Fax: +82-2-878-1452, E-mail: hangseok@snu.ac.kr, URL: http://pearlx.snu.ac.kr. Hangseok Choi was born in Korea in 1970. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He is presently working toward the Ph.D. degree at Seoul National University. Bo-Hyung Cho Phone: +82-2-880-1785, Fax: +82-2-878-1452, E-mail: bhcho@snu.ac.kr Bo Hyung Cho (M89-SM95) received the B.S. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and the Ph.D. degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg. From 1982 to 1995, he was a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia. Since 1995, he has been joined as a professor the school of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

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