High performance power converter for combined batteries-supercapacitor systems

In this paper the control of dual cascaded voltage source inverter applied to traction drives is presented. It allows to manage the power flows from and to two separate energy storage units: batteries and supercapacitors. A novel control is proposed, which allows to recharge the supercapacitors also during the normal runs of the vehicle, without overloading the batteries and with no additional power equipments. An experimental implementation confirms the validity of the proposed control algorithm and set-up.