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This paper presents an active state-of-charge (SOC) balancing control strategy for modular super capacitor energy storage system (ESS). The strategy has a master–slave structure, including a common dc bus voltage loop and individual slave current loop for each submodule. The common voltage loop ensures the ability of the system to stabilize dc bus voltage cannot be affected by SOC balancing control, and provides a same original current reference for all submodules. SOC information is introduced into current loops to achieve SOC balancing control. The highest SOC is taken as a reference for low SOC modules, thus, the low SOC modules can regulate the submodule average operation current according to the SOC reference and their own SOC. In order to minimize system current deviation caused by the introduction of SOC, a current correction method is proposed to improve system current regulate performance. The proposed strategy can achieve SOC balancing control during ESS charging and discharging process dynamically, in addition, the modularity of the system is improved and the proposed strategy has favorable stability. A modular ESS prototype consisting of three half-bridge submodules is tested in the laboratory, and the experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter presents a fast open circuit diagnostic method for modular multilevel DC/DC converter (MMDDC), which is applied in super capacitor energy storage system. The proposed method is derived based on the analysis of submodule output characteristics under both normal and fault conditions. For MMDDC, different types of open circuit fault are reflected by the output voltage of submodule in certain operating modes, thus a simple and effective diagnostic method by the aid of a hardware circuit and a fast fault location algorithm is proposed. The hardware circuit is responsible for detecting submodule output voltage and its output result is transmitted to a processor to accomplish the final fault diagnosis along with drive signals. The proposed approach avoids complex mathematical operations and minimizes fault diagnostic time; moreover, it can achieve fault diagnosis under a wide super capacitor operating voltage range. Finally, the proposed diagnostic method is verified experimentally based on a laboratory-scale MMDDC energy storage prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]