A management strategy for solar panel — battery — super capacitor hybrid energy system in solar car

This paper presents an application of solar energy battery super-capacitor hybrid energy storage system in solar electric vehicles. The key point is the proposed energy management control algorithm. The entire system consists of a solar panel, a boost converter, a battery, a super capacitor, a bi-directional DC/DC converter, and a brushless DC motor. This paper gives the details of the control strategy to cooperate the three energy sources or storage devices: solar panel, battery and super capacitor. A hysteretic control algorithm for battery charging by solar panel is given. A novel control method for bi-directional DC/DC is proposed to keep the battery discharging current within a certain limit and make full use of super capacitor. The switching transient between super-capacitor charging mode and discharging mode is also presented. Both simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.