Performance Analysis of Super Capacitor for Energy Storage

Battery technology has a number of disadvantages, despite being widely used and well-established. These disadvantages include mass, weight, high internal resistance, low power density, and poor transient response. On the other hand, thanks to developments in materials science and other technologies, energy storage devices like electrostatic double layer capacitors (EDLC), ultra capacitors, and super capacitors (SCs) look extremely promising. They are appropriate for a range of applications due to their lower internal resistance, lighter weight, smaller volume, higher transient responsiveness, and higher power density. Super capacitors benefit from their high power density and quick recovery from high currents. Super capacitors are a useful tool for lowering battery peak current and extending battery life in energy storage systems (ESS). The present paper describes the implementation of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based pulse-width modulation controller for a buck-boost converter. This controller helps in controlling the super capacitor’s performance. With the built hardware prototype, multiple modes of operation of the super capacitors were evaluated at different duty cycles and under charging and discharging situations utilizing an FPGA-based pulse width modulation (PWM) in a bidirectional converter.