Ultracapacitor Energy Management and Controller Developments for a Series-Parallel 2-by-2 Hybrid Electric Vehicle

Abstract

Ultracapacitors have many potential performance advantages over existing battery technologies for use in hybrid-vehicle applications, provided many integration and reliability disadvantages can be overcome. A novel ultracapacitor-only energy storage system has been developed for the University of Akron hybrid-electric vehicle, which uses a large sensor network and control strategy to mitigate these disadvantages. Limited in- vehicle testing has shown improvement over the previous battery system.