Development of an electric hybrid vehicle using a super capacitor and a battery unit

Abstract

There are more concerns over the environment due to global warming and the effects of using non-renewable energy sources, these concerns have paved the way to the development of vehicles using alternative energy sources rather than using fossil fuel for the transportation. This research is based on the continuation of the research development of an electric drive system for conventional automobiles. In this approach the Energy Storage System (ESS) has been one of the bottlenecks in the development process. Batteries have been the most common energy storage component for these vehicles because of their high energy density, responsiveness, compact size and reliability. The disadvantages of the batteries are obviously that the poor properties, low cycle life and specific power and mainly the cost because one thirds of the cost is lies on the battery in an electric vehicle. Batteries drain faster especially during rapid charging and discharging affecting their lifetime. If the small capacity battery bank is adopted considering the cost, volume and weight, the battery bank will often work in high current charging and discharging conditions or the power of the ESS has to be limited. If the battery bank capacity is increased to meet the power demand of the vehicle, the cost, volume and weight of the vehicle will be increased, to solve this contradictory, hybrid energy storage systems (HESSs) combining two or more types of storage components with complementary features have been proposed. HESSs composed of batteries and super capacitors or ultra-capacitors (SC or UC) are currently the most widely studied This research is focused on the conversion of a conventional ESS of an electric vehicle into an HESS to increase the battery life by implementing a super capacitor bank along with the battery pack. The desired characteristics are will be obtained by optimizing the power management system with the switching of the capacitor bank for high power demands smoothing the load profile of the battery pack.