This chapter presents a synergy-based cascade control scheme for a hybrid battery-ultracapacitor (UC) energy storage system. The purpose is to improve the dynamic response of the battery-based energy storage system using an ultracapacitor module as an auxiliary energy storage unit. A bidirectional DC-DC converter is designed to interface between the ultracapacitor module and the main DC-bus. The control scheme is based on a fast inner current control loop using sliding mode control and an outer loop for DC-bus voltage regulation using synergy-based control. The improvement in performance is demonstrated through simulation and experiments. The results show that the DC-bus voltage is well regulated under external load disturbances with fast dynamic transients. The ultracapacitor module is able to absorb the sudden load variations and limit the battery power requirements by maintaining an optimal power balance between the two embedded storage units. The performance of the proposed synergy-based controller is compared with the standard PI controller, and its ability to achieve optimal transient performance is verified.
Part of the book: Advancements in Energy Storage Technologies