| Supercapacitors are considered one of the newest innovations in the field of electrical energy storage. As an enabling technology, supercapacitors will share in the growth of information, communication and consumer goods. Also referred to as ultracapacitors or Electro-Chemical Double Layer (ECDL) capacitors, the supercapacitors have many attractive characteristics such as an extremely low equivalent series resistance ESR, an ultra low leakage current, a very high charge-discharge cycle life and a high useable capacity.; The growth in supercapacitors arises from displacing conventional battery and electrolytic capacitor products and from new market applications where existing technologies do not provide efficient solutions.; Despite the above mentioned advantages, the supercapacitor has 2 design concerns: the need for a charge equalizer when connecting 2 or more capacitors of equal values in series and the need for a dc-dc converter in a constant voltage application due to the sloping charge/discharge characteristics.; In this thesis, a new method is proposed to address these design concerns. Experimental set-ups are constructed including a voltage sensitive load with a supercapacitor as the only source of energy. Solutions to these design concerns are presented. |
