Design approaches to supercapacitor based surge resistant UPS techniques

Abstract

Time constants of supercapacitors are in the range of 100mS to tens of seconds compared to the time durations of power line transients, which are usually within a few hundred microseconds. Therefore supercapacitors should withstand short duration surges with energy values specified in IEEE C62-41 series and IEC 61400-4-5 and similar standards. After experimentally confirming this useful property of supercapacitors, new topologies for supercapacitor based surge-resistant uninterruptible power supplies were developed. Paper summarizes the approach to developing suitable topologies for surge-resistant UPS systems based on supercapacitor energy circulation techniques, despite the lower continuous DC voltage ratings of commercial supercapacitors.