Methods of testing the super capacitor energy storages at the application level

In order to safely operate the super capacitor energy storages as peak power units until the end of their lifetime in the real applications, characterizing the super capacitors is very important. Until now, most methods are based on the international standard IEC 62391. However, the detected parameters (capacitance, series resistance) are not sufficient to make a dynamic modeling, to represent the energy capacity of the super capacitors at different voltage level and to estimate the power losses at different power level. Therefore, the enhanced methods of characterizing super capacitor energy storage for the real applications are presented in this paper. Further, the parameter values of the super capacitors are traced as the function of the driving cycles. Thus, the lifetime of the super capacitor energy storages can be estimated in how many equivalent driving distance in the automotive applications.

Publication year:2008

Keywords:super capacitor, test method