Design of a Dual Energy Storage Power Converter for a Small Electric Vehicle

Conventional Electric Vehicles (EV) rely on the battery as the sole energy source to power the vehicle. However, the battery being a low power dense type of storage, high power demands (acceleration and braking) will degrade the battery or will not possible at all in some cases. Supercapacitors, on the other hand, have high power density and are more suited to absorb or release high power demands In this paper, the design of a power electronic converter system comprising two bidirectional dc-dc converters to handle power of the two energy sources, namely the battery and the supercapacitor, is presented. The design of voltage regulating controller for the dc-link is also presented. The PSCAD simulation of the controller and the experimental verification of the design followed by an analysis of the results are presented. The experiment has been extended to investigate EV scenario consisting of a brushless dc motor following New European Driving Cycle.(NEDC).