Energy Management Strategy of a Propulsion System with Supercapacitors for Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

The goal of the present study is to evaluate the supercapacitors performance in electrical vehicle applications, as the supercapacitors have a high charging and discharging rates which will help to extend the lifetime of the batteries and to increase the autonomy of the vehicle. The supercapacitors are connected in parallel with batteries to supply a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) through an inverter. The supercapacitors are connected to the DC bus through a buck-boost converter. For a better energy management, this study includes an energy management system (EMS) by implementing a control algorithm used to control the buck-boost converter, which evaluates the supercapacitors reference current required to satisfy the control strategy imposed. The proposed model as well as its implementation was tested in MATLAB/Simulink for the European driving cycle, before running the experiment.