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In this paper, we propose the use of the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy technique for state diagnosis of electric double-layer ultracapacitors. Ultracapacitors under investigation are Maxwell BCAP 0350 and they were stressed in several ways for our study. The analyzed stress conditions include accelerated aging tests, overvoltage, and over temperature tests. Chemical and physical effects on supercapacitor materials are pointed out through a morphologic analysis implemented by means of an environmental scanning electron microscope and a chemical composition analysis obtained by means of an energy dispersive spectrometer. Consequent degradation effects are described in terms of frequency behavior of equivalent circuital parameters.

Energy management strategies for an electric vehicle (EV) with multiple power sources have been widely described in literature. The investigated energy sources are batteries, ultracapacitors, fuel cells, flywheels and solar panels. The management strategy decides how to combine two or more sources in an optimal way. However, the behavior of these sources and also the behavior of the electric drives depend on their temperature. Moreover, the temperature can have extreme values in automotive applications and affect the energy management task. In this paper, to investigate the temperature effect on battery/ultracapacitor powered EV, temperature dependent models are presented for these storage components, as well as for the drive train components itself: power electronics and motor. The average motor iron loss and ultracapacitor loss tend to decrease with increasing temperature, while the average motor copper loss and power electronics loss tend to increase with increasing temperature. These two opposing trends cause the total loss of the drive train to have a rather small variation with temperature for the considered EV and in the considered temperature range. By consequence, the energy management strategy of the EV does not have to depend on the temperature in order to obtain maximal efficiency. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this paper, the application of a cascaded multilevel inverter as a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) is investigated. Two discontinuous multilevel space vector modulation (SVM) techniques are implemented for DVR control and are shown to reduce inverter switching losses while maintaining virtually the same harmonic performance as the conventional multilevel SVM at a high number of levels. This paper also presents a mathematical relationship for computing the distortion at the point of common coupling (PCC) as a function of the distortion of the DVR. This enables the selection of the number of levels required for a certain application. An extended sag duration support compared to the two-level DVR is another advantage of the DVR with a cascaded multilevel inverter. The common-mode voltage (CMV) at the PCC has been evaluated for the three SVM techniques (the conventional multilevel SVM and the two discontinuous SVM), presenting a lower CMV for the second discontinuous SVM. A design example is presented for an 11-kV 5-MVA DVR multilevel cascaded inverter for up to 17 levels, employing the conventional multilevel SVM and the two discontinuous SVM techniques. Scopus