Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013

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Implementation and Study of Super-capacitor Cell Power

Management System
Shao-Wei Chieh1 , Wen-Hsien Ho2 , Chung-Bo Tsai2 , Po-Chou Chen2 , and Sheng-Yuan Ou1
1

Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan

2
Taiwan Textile Research Institute, Taiwan

Abstract This paper proposes a novel super-capacitor cell power management system to
monitor current and balance state of charge for each cell while charging and discharging a multicell super-capacitor stack. Generally, the super-capacitor cells are in series connection to form
a multi-cell stack for practical applications due to the much lower operating voltage of supercapacitor. The cells should suffer from the imbalance charging issue caused by intrinsic property
differentials among separate cells even labeled the same specification. The imbalance charging
phenomenon can cause some super-capacitor cells in stack overcharging to be destroyed and
decrease their lifetime. The imbalance charging also results in other super-capacitor cells in the
same stack undercharging and makes the cells as well as the cell stack utilization and performance
very low. One popular conventional balance charging control method uses some passive networks
comprised of resistors so that there are some fatal disadvantages, including the poor efficiency
resulting from the resistor dissipation and the difficulty for resistor selection and setting as well
as the accuracy degrading. Therefore, this paper provides an active balancing circuit which can
maintain equal voltages across each super-capacitor cell and clamp the peak voltage across each
cell to a selectable maximum value by monitoring cell state of charge in the stack. The proposed
adaptive and active charging balance control method utilizes off-the-shelf control IC which only
needs to be simply and easily modified in which charging strategy is the pulse charging method
which is implemented easily and simply in view of super-capacitor lifetime and fast charging. The
experimental results verify the theoretic analysis and feasibility of the proposed control method.
1. INTRODUCTION

Based on the requirements for modern industry development, there is a need of utilizing a variety of
power sources for applications in widespread use of which super-capacitor is one. Super-capacitor
is also called electrical double-layer capacitor and has an invertible reaction for storage process
so that super-capacitor can be charged and discharged repeatedly for hundred thousands of times
and still keeps the useful characteristics which property is one of super-capacitor advantages in
applications. In addition, super-capacitor has speedy response and fast charging and discharging
capability compared to secondary battery to shorten the charging time and rapidly supply high
energy for load requirement. Applications of super-capacitors include camera flashlight, smart
meter, toys, LED display, UPS, electric vehicle and so on.
But currently, super-capacitor faces an important issue, the smaller operating voltage, and cant
be used in the high voltage applications such that should be series with many other super-capacitors
generally. This situation makes the super-capacitor string unfavorable because of simultaneously
charging to easy downgrade the super-capacitor property even lifetime. Therefore, we need a
balance charging and discharging control scheme to uniform the charging state and to avoid overcharging phenomenon on some super-capacitors of the series string.
Conventionally, a simple, favorite and widely-adopted solution to uniform the charging state is
so called passive even charging and discharging method that uses some matched resistors to balance
the voltages across each super-capacitor. Nevertheless, this traditional method has some drawbacks
of which one is the overcharged super-capacitors will be discharged through the matched resistors
and there are significant energy wasted in the resistors while stopping charging in addition to the
redundant resistor bank. For the reasons, this paper uses the active balance method to charge
and discharge the super-capacitor string and combines a DC-DC converter to regulate the required
output voltage.
2. PROPOSED CONTROL TECHNIQUE AND THEORY

Figure 1 illustrates the proposed system in this paper, including a super-capacitor stack with
series, a secondary battery stack, a charger/discharger circuit with balance control, a load regulator
comprises of a DC-DC power converter, and a micro-controller to response for entire system control.

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In the proposed system as shown in Fig. 1, the design load regulator is used to provide power
from super-capacitor or secondary battery to load with high efficiency, and the micro-controller
acts as the control core to detect and monitor the states of charge (SOC) for both super-capacitor
and secondary battery and thereby handle operations of other devices to achieve the predetermined
functions. In addition, the micro-controller can perform the control strategy for retrieve energy
from super-capacitor or secondary battery to load depending on the load variations. The charging/discharger circuit for super-capacitor and secondary battery and the load regulator circuit are
shown in Figs. 2 and 3 in which the pulse charging method is used to get the fast charging and the
high charging efficiency.
3. EXPERIMENT RESULTS

The experimental specifications for super-capacitor charging circuit under normal charging mode
are listed in Table 1 wherein the input voltage is predetermined as 4 V, the output voltage is 3.998 V,
and the charging current are about 20 mA200 mA and 200 mA2 A respectively corresponding to
different external program resistances. With two super-capacitors both having 2 V to be charged,
the used PWM control IC is programmed to output 4 V to charge the super-capacitor stack. Based
on the inherently distinct characteristics such as the internal resistances between the two supercapacitors, the required charging time for the rated voltage 2 V is different while charging therefore
the control IC should control the charging state of super-capacitors and maintain equal voltages
across each super-capacitor, reducing the higher voltage across one super-capacitor and increasing
the lower voltage across the other to achieve the charging balance.
Figure 4 illustrates the actually measured data from voltage meters and shows that the completely discharged voltages across these two super-capacitors are 0.449 V and 0.393 V respectively
where one super-capacitor is 10.7 F/2 V and the other is 13.8 F/2 V. The different capacitances are
selected to verify and confirm the proposed balance scheme in this paper. Fig. 5 shows the voltage
Table 1: Specifications for charging circuit.
Input voltage
External program resistance (1)
External program voltage (1)
Charging current ICHAR(1)

4V
5 k
0.1 V1 V
20 mA200 mA

Output voltage
External program resistance (2)
External program voltage (2)
Charging current ICHAR(2)

3.9980 V
500
0.1 V1 V
200 mA2 A

Figure 1: The proposed system in this paper.

Figure 2: Charger/discharger circuit for secondary

battery and load regulator circuit.

Figure 3:
capacitor.

Charger/discharger circuit for super-

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013

707

Figure 4: Voltages across completely discharged

super-capacitors.

Figure 5: Waveforms for voltage difference larger

than 750 mV.

Figure 6: Waveforms for voltage difference about

750 mV.

Figure 7: Waveforms for voltage difference about

250 mV.

Figure 8: Imbalance voltages across completely

charged super-capacitors.

Figure 9: balance voltages across completely

charged super-capacitors.

across one super-capacitor is about 1.7 V and the program voltage VPROG is about 0.1 V in CH3
when the voltage difference between input and output voltages is larger than 750 mV wherein CH1
represents the input voltage 4 V. Fig. 6 shows the waveforms for early charging state and Fig. 7
shows the program voltage decreases to be about zero because the voltage difference lowers to be
about 0.25 V while completely charged.
Figure 8 shows the imbalance voltages across completely charged super-capacitors measured
from voltage meters where one is 1.888 V and the other is 2.07 V. The voltage difference is up to
182 mV due to the distinct characteristics between two super-capacitors. Fig. 9 shows the actuallymeasured balance voltages across the two split super-capacitors under the balance control to verify
the design and control, in which the voltage difference is down to 12 mV.
4. CONCLUSIONS

This paper proposes a super-capacitor cell power management system including a super-capacitor
stack, a secondary battery stack, a charging/discharging circuit, a load regulator, and micro-

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PIERS Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013

controller. Both super-capacitor stack and secondary battery stack supplies the required energy
to load corresponding to the control of micro-controller with detecting and monitoring SOCs of
the two power sources. The charger/discharger performs the uniform charging strategy for supercapacitors in series to maintain the important operation characteristics and enlarge the lifetime.
The implemented system verifies the used uniform balance charging method with experiments in
which the voltage difference can be suppressed as 12 mV from 180 mV.
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