Control of Hybrid Battery/Ultra-capacitor Energy Storage for Stand-alone

Photovoltaic System
Xiong Liu1

Peng Wang1

Student member, IEEE

Poh Chiang Loh1

Feng Gao2

Fook Hoong Choo1

Member, IEEE
Member, IEEE
Member, IEEE
Member, IEEE
Division of Power Engineering, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
Email: {liux0039, epwang, epcloh, efhchoo}@ntu.edu.sg
2
School of Electrical Engineering, Shandong University, 73 Jingshi Road, Jinan, China
Email: fgao@sdu.edu.cn
1

Abstract -- Battery life is an important criterion in a stand-alone

photovoltaic system operation due to intermittent characteristic
of solar irradiation and demand. This paper presents a standalone photovoltaic system with Ni-MH battery and ultracapacitor serving as its energy storage elements. A control
strategy is proposed in this paper to reduce charging and
discharging cycles and avoid deep discharges of battery. The
battery converter is controlled in current mode to track a
charging/discharging reference current which is given by energy
management system, whereas the ultra-capacitor converter is
controlled to corporate solar irradiation fluctuations, load
spikes and variations to maintain a stable dc-link voltage.
Isolated PV system with the proposed control schemes is created
using MATLAB SIMULINK. An optimum performance is
achieved to serve as both high power and high energy sources
due to complementary characteristic of battery and ultracapacitor.
Index Terms-- Hybrid energy storage, PV system, Standalone, Ultra-capacitor

I.

INTRODUCTION

With the depletion of traditional energies and the increase

in pollution and greenhouse gases emissions, the contribution
from renewable energy to the total energy consumption in the
world will continuously increase. The main renewable energy
is directly or indirectly from sun in the forms of hydro, solar
and wind. Among these, solar energy is one of the richest
renewable energy sources. Therefore, solar energy conversion
systems have been become the fastest growing industry
technologies in many countries.
Since solar irradiance and temperature change with
weather conditions, the maximum power point tracking and
control is a major problem for a PV system in order to extract
the maximum power under time varying environment
conditions. Different MPPT algorithms have been proposed
in the previous literatures, for example, perturbation and
observation, hill climbing, incremental inductance (INC) etc
[1-6].
When the connection of renewable energy to the utility
network is not available or unduly expensive in remote areas,
the stand-alone PV system with energy storage element
becomes more and more attractive [7-9]. In a stand-alone PV
system, the control of charge and discharge of energy storage
to incorporate the variation of solar irradiation and load with

978-1-4244-5287-3/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

considering the battery life and supply reliability becomes

very important. Transferring high power for a short period of
time is fatal for batteries, but thats the most advantageous
properties of ultra-capacitor. The battery has a much higher
energy density, this allows the battery to store more energy
over a long period of time. Conversely the ultra-capacitor has
a much higher power density which allows the ultra-capacitor
to provide more power over a short period of time. Ultracapacitor has a very long life, significantly higher than
battery,
its
more
suitable
for
frequently
charging/discharging. The application of hybrid energy
storage devices in electric vehicle (EV) is popular now [1012] since EV has frequent motor startup and brake events.
Similarly, the power supply and demand in a stand-alone PV
system is variable, for example, a unexpected cloud may
cover the sunshine for a short duration and make the output
power a sudden drop, so PV panels are not an ideal source for
battery charging and discharging as the output is heavily
dependent on weather conditions, the battery is frequently
charged/discharged which shortens its useful life. In [13], the
concept of hybrid energy storage devices in PV system is
proposed and an effective energy control unit with battery
management system to maintain a higher state of charge
(SOC) of battery is also presented. In [14], optimum sizes for
PV panels, batteries and ultra-capacitors are considered for a
specific stand-alone system.
In this paper, the stand-alone PV system with hybrid
energy storage elements is studied to focus on detail control
methods for all the converters. The system consists of a boost
converter, battery and ultra-capacitor charging/discharging
converters to provide high reliable power for local loads.
Batteries are better preserved when they undergo steady rated
current charging and discharging, the proposed system
provides a method of load sharing by controlling/limiting the
current supplied by the battery and using the ultra-capacitor
to supply the remaining load current and maintain a stable dclink voltage. The battery converter is controlled in current
tracking mode and the ultra-capacitor converter is controlled
in dc-link voltage stabilizing mode. The three converters are
coordinately controlled to achieve the MPPT tracing, the
stable voltage of dc-link and optimum utilization of battery
and ultra-capacitor. Theoretical analysis and simulation

336

PARAMETERS FOR PHOTOVOLTAIC PANEL

Iph
Isat
q
A
k
Rs
Isso
ki
Tr
Irr
Egap
np
ns
S
T

Ultracapacitor

Battery

Symbol

Description

Value

Photocurrent
Module reverse saturation current
Electron charge
Ideality factor
Boltzman constant
Small series resistance
Short-circuit current
SC current temperature coefficient
Reference temperature
Reverse saturation current at Tr
Energy of the band gap for silicon
Number of cells in parallel
Number of cells in series
Solar radiation level
Surface temperature of the PV

1.602 1019 C
1.60
1.38 1023 J/K
3.27 A
1.7e-3
301.18 K
2.0793e-6 A
1.1eV
8
900
0~1000 W/m2
400 K

I sat = I rr (T / Tr )3 exp(( qE gap / kA) (1 / Tr 1 / T )) (3)

Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed stand-alone PV system.

results illustrate the good performances of the proposed

coordination control schemes.
II.

SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AND MODELING

A.

System Configuration
The proposed system configuration is shown in Fig. 1. The
PV array is composed of several PV modules connected in
series and parallel to form an appropriate output voltage and
power. The output power of the solar panel alters with solar
irradiation levels and ambient temperature to consider the
intermittent and uncertainty of solar energy. In order to
harness maximum power from the solar panel at any instant,
a MPPT control algorithm is accomplished by the dc/dc boost
converter which is connected between the terminal of the
solar panel and the dc link capacitor. The bidirectional dc/dc
converter of battery is used to track its predetermined
charging/discharging current reference curve which is given
by higher level energy management system, the ultracapacitor converter is controlled to provide remaining load
current and maintain the dc-link voltage across capacitor Cd
stable. It is necessary to keep the dc-link voltage constant
through making full use of high power and high energy
devices when the power output of PV or power demand of
load alters, otherwise, a poor dc-link voltage waveform will
do harm to sensitive dc loads. The three converters (Boost
converter, two bidirectional dc/dc converters) share a
common dc bus, dc loads can also be tied to the dc-link.
B.

Modeling of Solar Panel

A PV model is presented by the following three equations
[15, 16].

I pv = n p I ph n p I sat [exp(( q / AkT )(V pv / ns + IRs )) 1]

I ph = ( I sso + ki (T Tr )) S / 1000

Where Ipv and Vpv are output current and voltage of the
PV array respectively, np and ns are number of cells
connected in series and parallel respectively, S and T are solar
irradiation level and temperature respectively, the other solar
panel specifications are shown in TABLE I.
C.

Modeling of Battery
The battery model is modeled as a nonlinear voltage
source whose output voltage depends not only on the current
but also on the battery SOC, which is a nonlinear function of
the current and time, the mathematical expressions of the
battery can be extracted from the software and be described
as below [17].

Vb = Vo Rb ib K

Q
Q ib dt

SOC = 100(1

+ A exp( B ib dt ) (4)

i dt )
b

(5)

Where, Rb is the internal resistance of the battery, V0 is the

open circuit potential (V), ib is the charging/discharging
current of battery (A), K is the polarization voltage (V), Q is
the battery capacity (Ah), A is the exponential voltage (V),
and B is the exponential capacity (Ah).
D.

Modeling of Ultra-capacitor
The ultra-capacitor can be modeled by a capacitor C
connected in parallel with resistor Rp which represents the
current leakage effect, then connected in series with Rs which
represents the loss caused by internal heating in the capacitor
[18], as shown in Fig. 2.

(1)
(2)

TABLE I

337

Rp
Rs

Fig.3.Time-average model of the boost converter.

Fig.2. Equivalent representation of ultra-capacitor.

E.

Modeling of Power Converters

Since the switching frequencies for the three converters
are all set as 10kHz, time-average models are developed for
the converters without considering the high frequency
harmonics.
1) Boost converter
The boost converter is used to couple different voltage
levels between the dc link and the terminal output of solar
panel, moreover, it can make the solar panel operating at
maximum power point under any environmental condition.
The equations can be described as follow, and the symbols
here are set in accordance with Fig.1.

V pv VT = L1 di1 / dt + R1i1

(6)

VT = Vd (1 d1 )

(7)

Where Vd is dc link voltage, VT is the voltage across switch

ST, d1 is the duty ratio of the switch.
Time average model of the boost converter can be
established using the average switching method. The control
objective is Vpv, and Vd is supposed to be fixed with little
fluctuation, the model is shown in Fig.3.
2) Bidirectional dc/dc converter
The battery and ultra-capacitor converters are both
bidirectional dc/dc converters. Neglecting the switching
losses in the power converters and the power losses in the dclink capacitor, the bidirectional converter for battery can be
depicted as below:

VB Vb = L3 dib / dt + R3ib
VC = Vd d 3
I in ib d 3 = ic = Cd dVd / dt

(8)
(9)
(10)

where VB and Vb are the voltage across switch ST4 and the
battery terminal voltage respectively, Iin is the current flowing
into the dc-link, ic is the current flowing through the
capacitor, d3 is the duty ratio of the switch ST3. The two
switches conduct complementally, which means that the duty
ratio of ST4 is (1-d3). This converter can operate in buck
mode or boost mode. Suppose the battery current ib is
positive when operating in charging mode, and it is negative
in discharging mode. Time-average model of the battery
converter is shown in Fig.4. Similarly, the model of ultracapacitor converter is the same as battery converter.

Fig.4.Time-average model of the battery converter.

III. CONTROL ALGORITHMS FOR CONVERTERS

The objective of the boost converter is to track the
maximum power point of the solar panel by regulating the
panel terminal voltage using the power-voltage characteristic
curve, and the objective of the battery converter is to charge
and discharge the battery in an optimized mode to prolong the
battery lifetime. The purpose of the ultra-capacitor converter
is to provide sudden change current and guarantee a stable
dc-link voltage which is very important for the other two
converters, it can supply high power for a short period of time
and thus reduce the capacity of battery. The goal of these
three converters is to harness maximum power from the solar
panel and supply an uninterrupted power to the loads,
moreover, hybridization of two energy storage devices can
make the whole system cost-effective due to the reduction of
battery size and extension of battery lifetime.
A.

Control of Boost Converter

The MPPT is achieved by the boost converter using
perturbation and observation method due to its simplicity and
robustness to the variations of model parameters [3]. The
solar panel terminal voltage is determined by the MPPT
algorithm and the boost converter is used to regulate that
voltage. Dual-loop control strategy is chosen for the boost
converter, where the output of the outer voltage loop is set as
the reference value for the inner current control loop which is
shown in Fig. 5. A detail block diagram containing circuit
parameters is illustrated in Fig. 6. MPPT control is used to
find the input voltage of the boost converter, and the voltage
is set as the reference voltage of the control system. The
algorithm of MPPT is implemented by s-function in
MATLAB, which is very flexible and easy interfaced with
SIMULINK.

Fig.5. Control scheme of the boost converter.

338

frequency harmonics causing by switching actions, the

instantaneous power balance of the integrated PV system is
governed by

Pdc Pu Pb Pl = Cd vd dvd / dt
(11)
Where Pdc is the power generated from the boost converter,
Pu and Pb are the power exchanged with ultra-capacitor and
battery respectively, Pl is the power consumed by the load.
Since the ripple in the capacitor voltage is much less than the
steady-state voltage. Equation (11) can be rewritten as

Fig.6.control block diagram of boost converter.

ib* +

ib

PI

PWM

ST3

PWMup
L3 R3

ib
C bt

D3
B

Cd

Pdc Pu Pb Pl Cd Vd dvd / dt
(12)
Pdc, Pb and Pl are assumed to be constant at any particular
instant, so the power from the ultra-capacitor converter is
responsible to regulate the dc-link capacitor voltage.
Therefore, the transfer function from Pu to vd is given by

ST4

PWMdown

D4

Fig.7. Control scheme of the bidirectional battery converter.

vd ( s )

Pu ( s )

1 1

Cd Vd s

(13)

The ultra-capacitor terminal voltage is assumed constant at

any instant, so

Pu ( s ) = Vu iu ( s )

Fig.8. Current-loop control for battery converter.

iu ( s )

Ultracapacitor

Vd

PI

-1

vd ( s )

Vd
+

(14)

Equation (14) is altered to

Vu 1

Cd Vd s

(15)

It is clear from equation (15) that a linear first-order

dynamics exists between the dc-link voltage and the ultracapacitor current, so the reference value of iu can be
generated using a outer voltage loop and a PI controller is
applied.

1
iu * = (kvp + kvi )(vd * vd )
s

Fig.9. Control scheme of the bidirectional ultra-capacitor converter.

B.

Control of Battery Converter

The battery converter is controlled in current reference
tracking mode to avoid frequently charging and discharging.
Single current loop is enough to achieve this control objective
as illustrated in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. The current reference is
provided by energy management system. Through weather
and load forecasting in a long time, it is viable to figure out
the battery capacity and optimum charging/discharging curve
of that battery based on economic operation principle. This
current reference is obviously not a constant quantity, it can
be saved in a look-up table as a series of discrete data, so it
can be deemed as constant for a specific short period.
C. Control of Ultra-capacitor Converter
The purpose of the ultra-capacitor converter is to provide
sudden change current and guarantee a stable dc-link voltage.
Neglecting the losses in the power converters and high

(16)

The inner current control loop is used to force the battery

current to follow the reference generated in (16) using a PI
controller and is given by

1
d 2 = (kip + kii )(iu * iu )
s

(17)

The block diagram of the control system for the

bidirectional converter is shown in Fig.9.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
The system operations under different circumstances are
simulated to verify the proposed control methods as discussed
above. Parameters for the integrated circuit are listed in
TABLE II.

339

TABLE II
PARAMETERS FOR THE INTEGRATED SYSTEM

Capacitor across the solar panel

Inductor for the boost converter
Capacitor across the dc-link
Inductor for ultracapacitor converter
Equivalent resistance of L2
Filtering capacitor for ultracapacitor converter
Inductor for the battery converter
Resistance of L3
Filtering capacitor for battery converter
Switching frequency of power converters
Rated DC bus voltage
Capacity of the ultracapacitor

Value
110uF
2.5mH
4700uF
3mH
0.3ohm
220uF
3mH
0.3ohm
220uF
10kHz
400V
30F

The terminal voltage waveform of the solar panel is shown

in Fig. 10. The voltage value is changed based on the
proposed MPPT algorithm, and step-size of the algorithm is
set as 5ms which means that a refreshed voltage reference is
given per 5ms, so the voltage waveform is stair-like. The
output voltage ranges approximately from 200V to 250V as
seen from the figure. Fig.11 shows the shapes of solar
radiation level and output power of the PV panel where the
radiation level is preset as the system input parameter and the
power is calculated through the multiplication of voltage and
current. It is demonstrated from Fig.11 that the two shapes
are very similar to each other, which means that the output
power is nearly proportional to the input irradiation level
when the ambient temperature is fixed. The solar irradiation
level is set as 700W/m2 in the starting 0.15s, it increases to
1000W/m2 from 0.15s to 0.2s and is kept constant until 0.3s.
After that time, it decreases to 700W/m2 again from 0.3s to
0.4s and keeps that value until the final time 0.5s. The values
of irradiation levels shown in Fig. 11 are amplified 10 times
in order to get a good comparison display. The output power
changes from 3.3kW to 5.2 kW.
In order to clearly illustrate the respective function of
battery and ultra-capacitor, the load is set as 4kW which
resides in the PV output power range. Suppose the battery
works in discharge mode and the reference discharge current
is set as 4A. Since capacity selection of the two storage
devices is not the main idea in this paper, a 6.5Ah rated
capacity with 200V nominal voltage Ni-MH battery is
considered. Fig. 12 shows the discharging characteristic of
the battery applied in the proposed system. The first part
represents the exponential voltage drop when the battery is
full-charged, this is determined by the battery type. The
nominal area represents the charge that can be extracted from
the battery until the voltage drops below the battery nominal
voltage. The final part means the total discharge of the
battery when the voltage drops rapidly. The discharge curve
will alter when the discharging current varies. Bottom figure
of Fig. 12 shows different discharge curve under 3 typical
discharging current.
Stability of the dc-link voltage is very important for the
whole system, and it is guaranteed by the ultra-capacitor
converter. If there are big fluctuations in the dc link voltage,
the control performances of both the boost converter will be
deteriorated, because the control system design of boost
converter is based on a prerequisite fixed dc-link voltage. The

reference of dc-link voltage is set as 400V. Fig. 13 shows the

waveforms of battery terminal voltage, discharging current
and state of discharge. It can be seen that average discharging
current of the battery is kept at about 4A as set by the
reference, the initial SOC is set as 100%, it decreases to
nearly 99.99% when energy is extracted from the battery. Fig.
14 shows the waveforms of battery dc-link voltage, ultracapacitor discharging current and ultra-capacitor terminal
voltage. It can be seen that the dc-link voltage is kept 400V
with little fluctuations and the ultra-capacitor current is
changing due to the active power differences between the PV
source and system loads. A 4kW constant dc load is tied to
the dc bus. Since power of the source exceeds load capacity
from 0.15s to 0.4s, the ultra-capacitor works in charging
mode and receives the remnant power, this also leads to little
increase of the terminal voltage as shown in the bottom of
Fig. 14.

340

260
240

Voltage: V

220
200
180
160
0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25
Time: s

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

Fig.10. Voltage waveform across the solar panel.

11000
Radiation: W/m2
10000
9000
8000
7000
6000
Power: W
5000
4000
3000
2000
0
0.05
0.1

solar radiation level

solar power output

0.15

0.2

0.25
Time: s

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

Fig.11. Solar radiation level and solar power output.

Nominal Current Discharge Characteristic at 0.2C (1.3A)
250
Voltage

Cpv
L1
Cd
L2
R2
Cul
L3
R3
Cbt
fs
Vdc
C

Description

Discharge curve
Nominal area
Exponential area

200
150
0

2
3
4
5
6
7
Time (hours)
E0 = 214.125, R = 0.76923, K = 3.125, A = 24, B = 2.3077

250
Voltage

Symbol

200

150
0

10

20

30

40
50
60
Time (Minutes)

70

Fig.12. Battery characteristic of discharging.

80

90

[4]

V 250
240
220

200
0
9

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

[5]

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

[6]

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

6
3
0
0
% 100
99.995
99.99
0

[7]
Time: s

[8]

Fig.13. Waveform of battery terminal voltage, discharging current and state

of discharge, from top to bottom respectively.
[9]
V

405
390
370

350
0
5
0
-5
-10
-15
0
V 200.1

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

[10]

0.5

[11]
0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

[12]

200
199.9
0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

[13]

Time: s

Fig.14. Waveform of dc-link voltage, ultra-capacitor discharging current and

ultra-capacitor terminal voltage, from top to bottom respectively.

V.

[14]
[15]

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, a study of a stand-alone PV system with

hybrid battery/ultra-capacitor energy storage devices is
analyzed. Mathematical models and control schemes
containing MPPT control are provided for the three
converters, which are boost converter, battery converter and
ultra-capacitor converter. The proposed coordinated control
strategies are verified by Matlab/Simulink with detail models.
Simulation results show that the boost converter can track the
maximum power point of the solar panel, the battery
converter can track the current command accurately, and the
ultra-capacitor converter can generate remaining load current
and guarantee a constant dc-link voltage. With these results,
the control methods can be utilized for reliable and high
quality stand-alone PV system, the two energy storage
devices can complement for each other to extend lifetime and
reduce capacity of battery.

[16]

[17]
[18]

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