Application of Ultracapacitors in an Electric Toy Vehicle

Abstract

Battery has the limitations of based on reversible chemical reactions which degrade over time, power density means ability to give peak power is limited ,limited charge-discharge cycles capability, and, temperature dependence performance and life is significantly affected by ambient temperature variations. Ultracapacitors, by virtue of their technology, are not having such limitations, although they are faced with other limitations such as low energy density and high costs. In this paper, an experimental prototype toy vehicle running on batteries was retrofitted with the facility of power supply through two ultracapacitors with passive balancing with / without a battery. Using a test setup to provide controlled load on the vehicle, the performance of the vehicle under various charge/discharge conditions were observed with and without ultracapacitors. The results show experimentally that the voltage balancing is appropriated using two simple resistances or passive balancing when numbers of ultracapacitors to be connected in series are less, and no need of active balancing at this instance. The paper also shows experimentally that if ultracapacitors used with batteries, the life of the batteries is expected to increase.