Battery-supercapacitor hybrid system for high-rate pulsed load applications

Modern batteries (e.g., Li-ion batteries) provide high discharge efficiency, but the rate capacity effect in these batteries drastically decreases the discharge efficiency as the load current increases. Electric double layer capacitors, or simply supercapacitors, have extremely low internal resistance, and a battery-supercapacitor hybrid may mitigate the rate capacity effect for high pulsed discharging current. However, a hybrid architecture comprising a simple parallel connection does not perform well when the supercapacitor capacity is small, which is a typical situation because of the low energy density and high cost of supercapacitors. This paper presents a new battery-supercapacitor hybrid system that employs a constant-current charger. The constant-current charger isolates the battery from supercapacitor to improve the end-to-end efficiency for energy from the battery to the load while accounting for the rate capacity effect of Li-ion batteries and the conversion efficiencies of the converters.