2882 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO.

6, JUNE 2014

A Low Complexity Control System for a Hybrid DC

Power Source Based on Ultracapacitor–Lead–Acid
Battery Configuration
Branislav Hredzak, Member, IEEE, Vassilios G. Agelidis, Senior Member, IEEE, and Georgios D. Demetriades

Abstract—A dc hybrid power source based on the combination

of ultracapacitor and lead–acid battery is considered in this paper.
The various control systems for such hybrid power source reported
in the technical literature thus far are rather complex. A low com-
plexity control system for such hybrid power source is proposed in
this paper. The key feature of the proposed control system is its ca-
pability to maintain operation of the hybrid power source within all
important operational limits. The proposed control system allows
one to allocate the high-frequency current demands to the ultraca-
pacitor and specify the current limits for both the battery and the
ultracapacitor. It also maintains operation of the battery within
its state of charge limits and the ultracapacitor voltage at a pre-
defined value while charging the ultracapacitor from the battery
rather than from the common dc bus. Presented experimental re- Fig. 1. Grid-connected photovoltaic power system including a battery bank
sults verify the satisfactory operation of the power source utilizing and an ultracapacitor bank.
the proposed control system.
Index Terms—Energy storage, power electronics, power sup-
plies. for the stochastic nature of the photovoltaic power output and/or
also support the grid power.
Various control strategies for hybrid power sources have been
proposed, ranging from neural networks to fuzzy logic, rule-
I. INTRODUCTION
based control, and model predictive control (MPC). In [5]–[8],
YBRID power sources combining at least two power
H sources with different performance characteristics are
popular in automotive systems [1]–[9], renewable energy con-
[13], fuzzy, wavelet-fuzzy, and fuzzy-neural control methods
were proposed to control a hybrid power source. However, only
the fuzzy logic control method proposed in [6] was experimen-
version systems [10]–[17] and fuel-cell-based residential sys- tally verified and none of the fuzzy based methods were com-
tems [18], [19]. The main reason for using hybrid power sources prehensively evaluated under the current constraints and/or the
is to combine the benefits of each power source and to extend battery state of charge (SOC) constraints. The neural-network-
life expectancy as stresses due to undesired load currents drawn based system proposed in [9] is rather complex and the strategy
from one type of power source can be minimized. Batteries or is based on training the neural network using the results from
fuel cells are usually used as the main power source while the simulations. In addition, neither the battery SOC identification
ultracapacitors/supercapacitors are used as the secondary power nor the battery SOC constraints were considered in the design.
source in order to supply/store fast, large bursts of power. The rule-based control methods described in [10]–[12], [20] did
Fig. 1 illustrates an example of using a battery bank and an not consider the identification and/or the constraints of the bat-
ultracapacitor bank in a grid-connected photovoltaic power sys- tery SOC and also the dynamic performance of the system was
tem. Here, the batteries and the ultracapacitors can compensate not evaluated in detail. In [14]–[16], a MPC strategy for a hybrid
battery–ultracapacitor power source was proposed and compre-
hensively verified both by simulation and experimentally. The
main advantage of the proposed MPC strategy was that all cur-
rents and SOC constraints were taken into account during the
Manuscript received April 5, 2013; revised July 4, 2013 and July 29, 2013; ac- design. Overall, the comparison of the performance of the afore-
cepted July 29, 2013. Date of current version January 29, 2014. Recommended
for publication by Associate Editor T. M. Lebey. mentioned control strategies was rather problematic since the
B. Hredzak and V. G. Agelidis are with the School of Electrical En- types of the individual power sources, converter configurations,
gineering and Telecommunications, The University of New South Wales, and target applications may be different. In summary, none of
Sydney, N.S.W 2052, Australia (e-mail: b.hredzak@unsw.edu.au; vassilios.
agelidis@unsw.edu.au). the aforementioned control strategies, except the MPC control
G. D. Demetriades is with the ABB AB Corporate Research, 721 78 Västerås, strategy [14]–[16], have been comprehensively experimentally
Sweden (e-mail: georgios.demetriades@se.abb.com). verified and shown to operate within all constraints while al-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. locating high-frequency current components to the one of the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2013.2277518 power sources.
0885-8993 © 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
HREDZAK et al.: LOW COMPLEXITY CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A HYBRID DC POWER SOURCE
In [14]–[16] two bidirectional dc/dc converters were used
to connect the battery and the ultracapacitor to a dc bus. The
model predictive controller controlled each of the converters
while maintaining the SOC of the battery, the battery current, the
ultracapacitor voltage and current, and the total current within
predefined limits. One of the drawbacks of the method proposed
in [14]–[16] is that it is computationally demanding since it is
based on the classic MPC. Classic MPC relies on a discrete
model of the controlled system and a cost function. Then, at
each sampling step a quadratic programming solver is used to
find an optimal control input in order to minimize the chosen
cost function subject to the specified constraints. This imposes
significant computational demand on the hardware especially
if higher order models of the batteries and ultracapacitors are
used. As a result, the sampling frequency of the model predictive
controller has to be reduced, which limits the frequency response
of the hybrid power source.
In this paper, we propose a control system that is less com-
plex and hence less computationally demanding than an MPC
system, while providing comparable performance. For the same
experimental configuration (using DSPACE DS1104 controller
board), the sampling frequency achieved is 15 kHz as compared
to 100 Hz achieved with the MPC strategy [16]. The proposed
control system 1) allows allocation of the high frequency cur-
rent demands to the ultracapacitor; 2) permits specification of
the current limits for both the battery and the ultracapacitor;
3) maintains operation of the battery within its SOC limits;
4) maintains the ultracapacitor voltage at a predefined value;
and 5) charges the ultracapacitor from the battery rather than
from the common dc bus. The SOC of the battery is estimated
using a Kalman filter.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
explains the principle of operation and advantages of the pro-
posed control system for the hybrid battery–ultracapacitor dc
power source. Section III describes in detail the principle of
operation of the proposed control system. Section IV describes
design of the Kalman filter and the ultracapacitor charge con-
troller. Experimental results and parameters of the hybrid power
source and control system are given in Section V. Finally, the
conclusion of the research work is summarized in Section VI.
Equivalent circuits of the battery and the ultracapacitor and the
matrices of the corresponding state–space models are given in
the Appendix.
II. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION OF THE HYBRID
BATTERY–ULTRACAPACITOR DC POWER SOURCE
Fig. 2 shows a simplified block diagram of the hybrid battery–
ultracapacitor dc power source and the proposed control sys-
tem. The main goal of the control system is to allocate the
high-frequency current component of the total current to the
ultracapacitor, thus relieving stress on the battery and extending
its lifetime. As shown in Fig. 2, this is achieved by separating
the total required output current into high and low frequency
current components using a high-pass filter. The high- and low-
frequency current components are the reference currents for
the ultracapacitor and battery controllers, respectively. Subse-
2883
Fig. 2. Simplified diagram of the hybrid battery–ultracapacitor dc power
source and the proposed control system.
quently, the ultracapacitor and battery controllers control the
corresponding dc/dc converters so that the converter output cur-
rents follow the reference currents. At the same time, the ultra-
capacitor controller performs three distinct functions:
1) maintains the ultracapacitor voltage at around a reference
value to avoid such voltage exceeding its rated value;
2) limits the ultracapacitor current; and
3) charges the ultracapacitor from the battery rather than from
the common dc bus.
The battery controller on the other hand performs two func-
tions as follows:
1) maintains the operation of the battery within its predefined
SOC limits; and
2) limits the battery current.
Apart from the MPC control system proposed in [14]–[16],
no other technical papers proposed a unified control system that
meets all the aforementioned design specifications.
The main advantage of the proposed control system is that
the controllers are designed using only low-order transfer func-
tions, saturations, multiplications, and divisions, while meeting
all described performance requirements. Hence, much higher
sampling frequency can be achieved as compared to the MPC
system [14]–[16], which is based on an online optimization.
Another advantage is that the battery SOC estimation is inde-
pendent from the battery and ultracapacitor controllers, which
makes it easy to apply any battery SOC estimation algorithms.
This is unlike the MPC-based method where the battery and
ultracapacitor current control is interleaved with the battery and
ultracapacitor models, and hence the performance may be af-
fected by inaccuracies of the models.
Detailed design of the proposed control system is described
in the following Section III.
III. CONTROL SYSTEM
A. Description
Fig. 3 shows the hybrid battery–ultracapacitor dc power
source and the proposed control system in detail. The battery
and the ultracapacitor are connected to the dc/dc converters via
inductors (Lb , Rb ) and (Lc , Rc ), where (L, R) are the values
2884
Fig. 3. Detailed diagram of the hybrid battery–ultracapacitor dc power source and the proposed control system.
for the inductance and the equivalent series resistance of the
inductor, respectively.
The output total current itotal is filtered by inductor (Lf l , Rf l )
and capacitor Cf l . Two voltage sensors are used to measure the
battery voltage vbatt and the ultracapacitor voltage vcap , and
two current sensors are used to measure the battery current ibatt
and the ultracapacitor current icap .
Each dc/dc converter is driven by a standard pulsewidth mod-
ulation (PWM) generator, which generates the switching signals
for the upper and the lower switches with a duty cycle dbatt and
dcap for the battery and the ultracapacitor, respectively. The in-
put to the PWM generator is the modulation index mbatt and
mcap defined as mbatt = (1 − dbatt ) and mcap = (1 − dcap )
for the battery and the ultracapacitor, respectively. The two high-
frequency switching dc–dc converters operate in the continuous
conduction mode (CCM).
There are two reference inputs to the control system; the
reference ultracapacitor voltage vcap ref and the total required
output current itotal req given by (1)
ptotal req
itotal req =
Vbus
where ptotal req is the total power that is to be supplied or stored
by the power supply, and Vbus is the dc bus voltage assumed
to be constant. For simplicity, it is assumed that the conversion
efficiency is ideal i.e., 100%.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 6, JUNE 2014
Four constant saturation blocks are used to limit the ul-
tracapacitor current to +/−icap m ax , the battery current to
+/−ibatt m ax , the SOC of the battery to SOCm in,m ax , and the
ultracapacitor charging current to +/−icharge m ax . The SOC of
the battery is estimated using the Kalman filter assuming that
the SOC of the battery is proportional to the voltage across the
bulk capacitor vCbulk in the battery model [21].
The outputs from the control system are the required battery
current ibatt req and the required ultracapacitor current icap req .
Both these required currents ibatt req and icap req are enforced
using proportional-integral (PI) current controllers.
B. Principle of Operation
The total output current from the hybrid power source itotal
in the continuous time domain is given by (2)
itotal = Gf itotal C (2)
where itotal C is the total output current from the dc/dc converters
(see Fig. 3) given by (3)
itotal C = ibatt mbatt + icap mcap (3)
(1)
1
and Gf = s 2 L f l C f l +sR f l C f l +1
is the transfer function of the
low-pass LC filter formed by the inductor (Lf l , Rf l ) and the
capacitor Cf l .
Neglecting the voltage drop across the inductors (Lb , Rb )
and (Lc , Rc ), the battery modulation index mbatt and the
HREDZAK et al.: LOW COMPLEXITY CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A HYBRID DC POWER SOURCE 2885

ultracapacitor modulation index mcap can be approximated as

(4) and (5), respectively [22]
vbatt
mbatt ≈ (4)
Vbus
vcap
mcap ≈ (5)
Vbus
If the battery voltage variation is assumed to be negligible,
then the battery modulation index can be assumed to be a con-
stant (6)
vbatt nom
mbatt ≈ kbatt = (6)
Vbus
where vbatt nom is the nominal battery voltage.
Considering (5) and (6), and assuming that the magnitude and
phase contribution of the low-pass filter Gf is negligible within
the frequency range of itotal req , (2) can be simplified as (7)
itotal ≈ ibatt kbatt + icap mcap (7)
Fig. 4. Bode plot of the high-pass filter used to allocate the fast current
Equation (7) shows that the ultracapacitor and battery currents component to the ultracapacitor and the slow current remaining component to
icap and ibatt are decoupled and hence fast current changes can the battery.
be allocated to the ultracapacitor and slow current changes to
the battery. ing harmonics in vcap . The transfer function of the low-pass
Hence, the total required current itotal req can be sep- 1
filter is lowpass = 0.0001s+1 , and the filter is zero-order hold
arated into a fast, high-frequency component highpass discretized for implementation.
(itotal req ) and a slow, low-frequency component [itotal req − The high-frequency component highpass(itotal req ) is ob-
highpass (itotal req )]. The required ultracapacitor and battery tained by high-pass filtering of the total required output cur-
currents icap req and ibatt req are then given by (8) and (9), re- rent. The transfer function of the high-pass filter is highpass =
spectively 0.25s 2
0.25s 2 +s+1 and the filter is zero-order hold discretized for im-
Vbus plementation. The Bode plot of the high-pass filter is shown in
icap req = highpass (itotal req ) (8)
vcap Fig. 4.
In order to limit the battery current and to ensure that the
1
ibatt req = [itotal req − highpass (itotal req )] . (9) battery does not overcharge or overdischarge (i.e., the SOC
kbatt remains within SOCm in,m ax limits), (9) is augmented into (11)
If the required battery and ultracapacitor currents ibatt req ⎡ ⎛ ⎞⎤
and icap req are enforced using PI current controllers, then from [itotal req − highpass (itotal req )]
⎢ 1 ⎜ ⎟⎥
(7) the total actual current itotal will follow the required total ⎢ ⎜ + k1 [SOC − satSOC (SOC)] ⎟⎥
ibatt req = satibatt ⎢ ⎜ ⎟⎥
current itotal req . ⎣ kbatt ⎝ lowpass (vcap ) ⎠⎦
In order to limit the ultracapacitor current and to charge the − icharge
Vbus
ultracapacitor to a predefined reference voltage vcap ref , (8) is
(11)
augmented into (10)
   
Vb u s
highpass (itotal req )sat1/m c a p lowpass where
icap req = saticap (v c a p )
⎧
+icharge ⎨ +ibatt m ax for x ≥ +ibatt m ax
(10) satibatt (x) = x
⎩
where −ibatt m ax for x ≤ −ibatt m ax
⎧ ⎧
⎨ +icap m ax for x ≥ +icap m ax ⎨ SOCm ax for x ≥ SOCm ax
saticap (x) = x sat (x) = x .
⎩ SOC
⎩
−icap m ax for x ≤ −icap m ax SOCm in for x ≤ SOCm in
⎧
⎨ 1/mcap m ax for x ≥ 1/mcap m ax The first term [itotal req − highpass (itotal req )] in (11) is the
sat1/m c a p (x) = x . remainder of the total required output current and hence it allo-
⎩
1/mcap m in for x ≤ 1/mcap m in cates the slow current changes to the battery. The second term
k1 [SOC − satSOC (SOC)] in (11) ensures that the total required
Vb u s
Saturation sat1/m c a p limits the division result lowpass(v cap )
, battery current drops to zero once the SOC limits are reached.
where lowpass(vcap ) is the low-pass filtered measured ultraca- Design of the Kalman filter, which is used to estimate the SOC
pacitor voltage in order to eliminate the high-frequency switch- of the battery is given in Section IV.
2886
TABLE I
SYSTEM PARAMETERS
lowpass (v
cap )
The third term (−icharge Vb u s ) in (11) ensures that
the ultracapacitor is charged from the battery when initially
discharged and also any low-frequency variations in the ultra-
capacitor voltage are compensated by the battery.
IV. KALMAN FILTER, CHARGE CONTROLLER, AND CURRENT
CONTROLLER DESIGN
This section describes the Kalman filter used to estimate the
SOC of the battery, the ultracapacitor charge controller and the
current controller.
A. Kalman Filter
Battery model is required in order to design a static Kalman
filter, which is used to estimate the SOC of the battery. We used
an RC state–space battery model of an 8-Ah-sealed valve regu-
lated lead–acid battery cell by Hawker given and experimentally
verified in [21]. The continuous-time domain state–space model
of the battery is
ẋbatt = Abatt xbatt + Bbatt ibatt
ybatt = Cbatt xbatt (12)
where xbatt = [vC bulk vC surf vbatt ]T , ybatt = [ vC b vbatt ]T
[16], [21]. Equivalent circuit of the battery and the matrices
of the state–space model are given in the Appendix.
The state equation (12) is used to design the static Kalman
filter with the measured battery current ibatt taken as the input
and the measured battery voltage vbatt taken as the measured
output. The Kalman filter computes the best estimates of all the
model states including the bulk capacitor voltage vC bulk [21].
In [21], it is shown that the SOC of the battery is approximately
linearly dependant on the bulk capacitor voltage vC bulk , and
hence the estimated SOC can be calculated from the estimated
vC bulk using (13)
SOC = kSOC vC bulk + qSOC (13)
where kSOC , qSOC are constants (given in Table I).
In order to design the Kalman filter, the battery state–space
model (12) is zero-order hold discretized and augmented with
the noise vectors w(k) and v(k) as
xbatt (k + 1) = Φbatt xbatt (k)+Γbatt ibatt (k)+Gw (k) (14)
ym eas (k) = Cm eas xbatt (k) + v(k)
where Φbatt , Γbatt are the system matrices obtained from
the zero-order hold discretization, ym eas = vbatt (k), Cm eas =
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 6, JUNE 2014
[ 0 0 1 ]; the process noise vector w(k) and the measurement
noise vector v(k) are zero-mean white noises with covariance
matrices Q and R, respectively, and G is the noise gain matrix
relating the process noise to the state variables. In our case, G
is chosen to be an identity matrix.
The estimated states x̂batt (k) are computed from the mea-
sured output ym eas = vbatt (k) by the stationary Kalman filter
(15) [23], [24]
x̂batt (k + 1|k) = Φbatt x̂batt (k|k − 1) + Γbatt ibatt (k)
+ L(ym eas (k) − ŷm eas (k))
ŷm eas (k) = Cm eas x̂batt (k|k − 1). (15)
The gain matrix L in (15) is given by
 −1
L = Φbatt PCT T
m eas Cm eas PCm eas + R (16)
where the matrix P is the covariance matrix of the state estima-
tion error. The covariance matrix P is obtained as the solution
to the Riccati equation (17)
 −1
P = Φbatt PΦT batt − Φbatt PCm eas Cm eas PCm eas + R
T T
× Cm eas PΦT
batt + Q. (17)
In order to find the gain matrix L using (16) and (17), the co-
variance matrices R and Q have to be specified. The covariance
matrix R represents the variance of the battery voltage measure-
ment noise and was selected as R = 0.1. The selection of the
parameters of the covariance matrix Q is complicated by the
fact that the knowledge of the system disturbances, noises, and
the model inaccuracies is very limited. We assumed that the dis-
turbances, noises, and the model inaccuracies are uncorrelated
which leads to a diagonal matrix Q. Initially, all the diagonal
elements of Q can be set to a constant value and then each diag-
onal element can be tuned by observing the estimator response
first in simulation and then in real time. After some tuning, the
matrix Q was selected as Q = diag(1 × 10−7 , 1, 10).
The estimator matrix L calculated using (16) and (17) for the
earlier given Q and R matrices is (18)
⎡ ⎤
3 × 10−4 0 0
⎢ ⎥
L=⎣ 0 4 × 10−4 0 ⎦. (18)
0 0 0.9902
B. Ultracapacitor Charge Controller
In order to design the charge controller Cch , we used the
continuous-time domain state–space model of the ultracapacitor
given as
ẋcap = Acap xcap + Bcap icap
(19)
ycap = Ccap xcap + Dcap icap
where xcap = [ vf vm vs ]T , ycap = vcap [16], [25]. Equiv-
alent circuit of the ultracapacitor and the matrices of the state–
space model are given in the Appendix.
The charge controller charges the ultracapacitor, when it is
initially discharged and also maintains the ultracapacitor volt-
age around the required constant value vcap ref during the op-
eration. The low-pass filtered measured ultracapacitor voltage
HREDZAK et al.: LOW COMPLEXITY CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A HYBRID DC POWER SOURCE 2887

Fig. 7. Photograph of the experimental prototype.

Fig. 5. Open-loop Bode plot of the model combining the ultracapacitor model,
low-pass filtered ultracapacitor voltage, and the charge controller.

Fig. 6. Block diagram of the current controller.

lowpass (vcap ) is used as a feedback for the charge controller.

The charge controller has to suppress the low-frequency errors
and be insensitive to high-frequency errors so that it does not
interfere with the highpass (itotal req ) term in the required ultra-
capacitor reference current. A simple integrator ( ks2 ) can meet
these requirements. The open-loop Bode plot of the model com-
bining the ultracapacitor model, low-pass filtered ultracapacitor
voltage and the charge controller Cch = ( ks2 ) is shown in Fig. 5.
The output from the charge controller (the required charge cur-
rent icharge ) is limited to +/−icharge m ax = +/−icap m ax using a
constant saturation. A standard antireset windup is used to limit
the charge controller output overshoot.

C. Current Controller
As mentioned in Section III.B, the required battery and ul-
tracapacitor currents ibatt req and icap req are enforced using PI
current controllers. The PI current controllers are designed using
the procedure described in [22].
The plant to be controlled in the battery current control loop
in Fig. 3 is defined by (20) and (21)

vbatt − vL b = mbatt Vbus (20)

dibatt Fig. 8. Experimental results illustrating operation of the hybrid battery–
vL b = Rb ibatt + Lb . (21) ultracapacitor power source (current limits reached).
dt
2888
Fig. 9. Experimental results illustrating operation of the hybrid battery–
ultracapacitor power source (SOC limits reached).
If the control variable is chosen to be the inductor voltage
vL b , then the plant to be controlled is obtained by the Laplace
transformation of (21) as ibatt = L b s+R1
vL b . The modulation
b
v −v
index mbatt is obtained from mbatt = b a t tV b u Ls b r e f . Here vL b ref
is the PI controller output [22].
The block diagram of the current controller is shown in Fig. 6
and the parameters of the designed controller are given in Table I.
The PI controller for the ultracapacitor current control loop
is designed in the same way.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
We verified the proposed control system on the experimen-
tal prototype shown in Fig. 7. In our prototype, we used three
100-F Maxwell ultracapacitors connected in series and three
8-Ah Cyclon Hawker battery cells connected in series. Consid-
ering the chosen current limits and the chosen dc bus voltage
as given in Table I, the maximum output power of the proto-
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 6, JUNE 2014
Fig. 10. Experimental results illustrating operation of the hybrid battery–
ultracapacitor power source (ultracapacitor responds to fast current changes).
type is about 28 W. We used Simulink R
and the Real-Time
Workshop software to build and deploy the designed control
system on the DSPACE DS1104 controller board. Parameters
of the control system, the battery, the ultracapacitor, and the
inductors are given in Table I. (Note: The controllers and the
Kalman filter can be practically implemented on any low cost,
low performance microcontroller with sufficient number of in-
puts and outputs. Either sense resistors or Hall-effect sensors can
be used as the battery and ultracapacitor current sensors based
on accuracy versus cost system design specifications. A current
transformer is not suitable to sense the dc/low frequency battery
current; however, it may be suitable to sense the high-frequency
ultracapacitor current subject to the transformer’s bandwidth.)
Experimental results for different operating conditions are
shown in Figs. 8 to 11.
The results in Fig. 8 illustrate the operation when the battery
current and the ultracapacitor current limits (ibatt m ax,m in =
HREDZAK et al.: LOW COMPLEXITY CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A HYBRID DC POWER SOURCE 2889

current limits are reached during the operation the actual total
current does not match the total required current.

VI. CONCLUSION
We proposed and experimentally verified a low complex-
ity control system for a hybrid battery–ultracapacitor dc power
source. The experimental results showed that the hybrid unit op-
erates within the specified limits and the ultracapacitor responds
to fast current changes, while the battery responds mainly to
slow current changes. The proposed control system provides
comparable performance to the MPC one. Its key advantage is
that it is less complex and hence easier to design and implement.
Moreover, higher sampling frequency can be achieved when the
control system is discretized for practical implementation.

APPENDIX
Equivalent circuit of the battery used to derive the battery
state–space model is shown in Fig. 12.

Fig. 12. Equivalent circuit of the battery.

Fig. 11. Experimental results illustrating operation of the hybrid battery–

ultracapacitor power source (ultracapacitor responds to fast current changes). Fig. 13. Equivalent circuit of the ultracapacitor.

The matrices of the battery state–space model are

⎡ ⎤
±2A, icap m ax,m in = ±4A) are reached. As a consequence, the a11 a12 0
⎢ ⎥
actual total current does not match the total required current. Abatt = ⎣ a21 a22 0 ⎦ , Bbatt = [ b11 b21 b31 ]T ,
Fig. 9 shows results associated with the operation when the a31 0 a33
SOC limits are reached (SOCm in = 37%, SOCm ax = 63%). The  
control system operates as expected and once either the SOCm in 1 0 0
Cbatt =
or the SOCm ax is reached both the battery current and the actual 0 0 1
total current drop to zero (see Mark 1 in Fig. 9).
−1 1
The response of the proposed controller to sinusoidal, square, a11 = , a12 =
Cbulk (Re + Rsurf ) Cbulk (Re + Rsurf )
and sawtooth waveforms emulating the total required output
current is presented in Fig. 10. Since none of the constraints are 1 −1
a21 = , a22 =
reached, in this case the actual total current matches the required Csurf (Re + Rsurf ) Csurf (Re + Rsurf )
total current. 2
Re + Rsurf Rsurf Re + Rsurf
The results in Fig. 11 show the operation of the proposed a31 = 2
−
control system in response to a random total required output Csurf (Re + Rsurf ) Cbulk Re (Re + Rsurf )2
current. The ultracapacitor responds to fast current changes and Rsurf 1
a33 = − ,
the battery mainly to slow current changes. When some of the Re Cbulk (Re + Rsurf ) Csurf (Re + Rsurf )
2890 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 6, JUNE 2014

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HREDZAK et al.: LOW COMPLEXITY CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A HYBRID DC POWER SOURCE 2891

Branislav Hredzak (M’98) received the B.Sc./M.Sc.
degree from the Technical University of Kosice,
Slovak Republic, in 1993, and the Ph.D. degree from
Napier University of Edinburgh, U.K., in 1997, all in
electrical engineering.
He was a Lecturer and a Senior Researcher in
Singapore from 1997 to 2007. He is currently a
Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineer-
ing and Telecommunications, The University of New
South Wales, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia. His current
research interests include hybrid storage technologies
and advanced control systems for power electronics and electric drives.
Georgios D. Demetriades was born in Famagusta,
Cyprus. He received his M.Sc. degree in electrical
engineering at the Democritus University of Thrace,
Thrace, Greece, the Technical Licentiate and the
Ph.D. degrees both in power electronics from the
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm,
Sweden.
He worked in Cyprus for two years and in 1995
he joined what is today known as ALSTOM Power
Environmental Systems, Växjö, Sweden. In the year
2000, he joined ABB Corporate Research, Kungs-
backa, Sweden, where he is currently a Research and Development Engineer.
His main research interests include power electronics, VSC HVDC, FACTS
devices, high-frequency dc–dc power resonant converters, and high-frequency
electromagnetic modeling.

Vassilios G. Agelidis (S’89–M’91–SM’00) was born

in Serres, Greece. He received the B.Eng. degree in
electrical engineering from the Democritus Univer-
sity of Thrace, Thrace, Greece, in 1988, the M.S.
degree in applied science from Concordia University,
Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from the Curtin University,
Perth, WA, Australia, in 1997.
From 1993 to 1999, he was with the School of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin Uni-
versity. In 2000, he joined the University of Glasgow,
Glasgow, U.K., as a Research Manager for the Glasgow-Strathclyde Centre for
Economic Renewable Power Delivery. In addition, he has authored/co-authored
several journal and conference papers as well as Power Electronic Control in
Electrical Systems in 2002. From January 2005 to December 2006, he was the
inaugural Chair of Power Engineering in the School of Electrical, Energy, and
Process Engineering, Murdoch University, Perth. From December 2006 to June
2010, he was the Energy Australia Chair of Power Engineering at the Univer-
sity of Sydney. He is currently the Director of the Australian Energy Research
Institute, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia.
Dr. Agelidis received the Advanced Research Fellowship from the United
Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in 2004. He
was the Vice President Operations within the IEEE Power Electronics Society
during 2006–2007. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE POWER ELECTRON-
ICS LETTERS from 2003 to 2005, and served as the Power Electronics Society
(PELS) Chapter Development Committee Chair from 2003 to 2005. He was an
AdCom Member of IEEE PELS for 2007–2009 and the Technical Chair of the
39th IEEE Annual Power Electronics Specialists Conference, Rhodes, Greece.