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Article in Edn -Boston then Denver then Highlands Ranch Co- · June 2012
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Pierre Mars
CAP-XX (Australia) Pty Ltd
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Coupling a supercapacitor
with a small energy-
harvesting source
Supercapacitors store energy and deliver peak power in support of energy har-
vesters. Designers should consider several key issues when pairing them with
small energy-harvesting sources.
S
mall wireless sensors are becoming ubiqui- the load voltage decreases, the load current increases to
tous. Applications for sensors include building achieve the load power. Referring to Figure 1, designers can
control, industrial control, security, location model supercapacitor discharge as
tracking, and RFID. It is much more convenient
and cost-effective to autonomously power these VLOAD=VSCAP−ILOAD×ESR;
sensors with a small energy-harvesting source PLOAD=VLOAD×ILOAD=(VSCAP−ILOAD×ESR)×ILOAD
without expensive wires or batteries that need repeated =VSCAP×ILOAD−ILOAD2×ESR,
replacement.
The environment provides infinite ambient energy, where VSCAP is the supercapacitor’s voltage.
including piezoelectric, thermal, vibration, and photovoltaic This equation yields the equation for the load current:
energy, but at low power, which falls short of the peak power
necessary for transmitting data across wireless networks such ILOAD2×ESR−VSCAP×ILOAD+P=0.
as IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee), 802.11 (WLAN), or GSM/GPRS.
A battery or a supercapacitor acts as a power buffer to store Supercapacitor discharge can then be simply modeled in
enough energy to provide the power bursts needed to acquire Excel as
and transmit data. These energy-storage devices charge at low
power and deliver the burst power when necessary. ILOAD(t)=[VSCAP(t)−√(VSCAP(t)2−4×ESR×P)]/(2×ESR);
VLOAD(t)=VSCAP(t)−ILOAD(t)×ESR; and
Sizing the supercapacitor VSCAP(t+dt)=VSCAP(t)−dt×ILOAD/C.
Supercapacitor cells typically operate at 2.3 to 2.8V. The most
efficient and cost-effective strategy is to limit the supercapaci- This calculation is important if the load current times ESR is
tor’s charge voltage to less than the cell-rated voltage and significant compared with the supercapacitor’s final voltage.
store enough energy for your application. In this case, a simple energy-balance approach would make
A simple approach to sizing the supercapacitor is to cal- the supercapacitor’s value too small. This undersizing is likely
culate the energy necessary to support the peak power of to be the case at low temperatures, when ESR is typically two
the application, P, and set this value equal to ½C(V2INITIAL− to three times higher than at room temperature.
V2FINAL), where C is the capacitance, V2INITIAL is the square of The supercapacitor capacitance and ESR should also
the supercapacitor’s voltage just before the peak-power burst, allow for aging. Supercapacitors slowly lose capacitance
and V2FINAL is the square of the final voltage. However, this and increase ESR over time. The aging rate depends on
equation does not allow for any losses in the supercapacitor’s cell voltage and temperature. Designers should select initial
ESR (equivalent series resistance). The load sees a voltage of capacitance and ESR so that the end-of-life capacitance and
VINITIAL−ESR×ILOAD, where ILOAD is the load current. Because ESR can support the applications.
R8
100k
R7 R1
R4
10M 2.2M
3.9M
+
R3 +1
IGN +3 5
6 470
IC2 4
1 IC1
TLV3011
3
2 4 + 2 −
− HZ202 C1
Q1 5 0.09F
R6 MAX447DEVK 1 nF
IRLML6401 200m
49k
R2
R9 R5
2.2M
RL 1.2M
LOAD
–
OVERVOLTAGE PROTECTION
Figure 5 A microgenerator includes a diode bridge, which prevents the supercapacitor from discharging back into the generator,
leading to a simple charging circuit.
LTC3625 ICs, and Texas Instruments, with its BQ25504, charge in Figure 6 have leakage currents of 0.2 and 0.3 μA after
supercapacitors from energy-harvesting sources. 160 hours. Leakage current increases exponentially with
temperature. The time it takes to settle to the equilibrium
Leakage current value decreases with increased temperature as the ions dif-
Because some energy harvesters deliver only a few microamps, fuse more rapidly. Thus, these capacitors require a minimum
leakage current becomes important. Supercapacitors can have current to charge from 0V. Depending on the supercapacitor,
leakage currents of less than 1 μA, making them suitable for this current ranges from 5 to 50 μA. Designers should con-
energy-harvesting applications (Figure 6). EDNMS4441 Figsider
5.eps testing
DIANE the minimum charging current when selecting
When a supercapacitor charges, the leakage current a supercapacitor for an energy-harvesting circuit.
decays over time as the ions in the carbon electrodes diffuse
into the pores. The leakage current settles to an equilibrium Cell balancing
value, which depends on capacitance, voltage, and time. Circuits requiring that the supercapacitor’s terminal volt-
Leakage current is proportional to cell capacitance. A rule age is greater than the cell-rated voltage require several
of thumb for equilibrium-leakage-current supercapacitors supercapacitor cells in series to reach the rated voltage,
at room temperature is 1 μA/F. The 150-mF capacitors such as 5V or 12V. In this case, a cell-balancing circuit
is necessary; otherwise, one of the
cells could go into an overvoltage
condition because the cells all have
40 CAP-XX GZ115 0.15F slightly different leakage currents,
35
CAP-XX GZ115 0.15F
CAP-XX HS230 1.2F, 5V
with different voltage-to-leakage-
CAP-XX HS230 1.2F, 5V current characteristics. Because they
MAXWELL PC10 10F
30 MAXWELL PC10 10F are in series, however, they must all
25
POWERBURST 4F
POWERBURST 4F
have the same leakage current. To
POWERSTOR 1F achieve this goal, the cells redis-
LEAKAGE POWERSTOR 1F
CURRENT
20 NESSCAP 3F tribute charge among themselves;
(μA) 15
NESSCAP 3F
AVX 0.1F, 5V
in doing so, one cell may go into an
AVX 0.1F, 5V overvoltage state. Cells at varying
10 temperatures or aging over time at
5
different rates can exacerbate this
problem. The simplest balancing
0 circuit is a resistor in parallel across
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
each cell. Depending on the leakage
TIME (HOURS) current of the supercapacitor and the
operating temperature, the resistor’s
Figure 6 A rule of thumb for equilibrium-leakage-current CAP-XX supercapacitors at value typically ranges from 1 to 50
room temperature is 1 μA/F. kΩ, but the leakage current through
the balancing circuit is too high for
0.00000001 0
Author’s biography
0 1000 10,000 100,000 1,000,000 Pierre Mars is vice president of quality
Time (SEC) and application engineering for CAP-
XX Ltd. He has both bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in electrical engi-
ABSOLUTE OP-AMP SUPPLY TOP CURRENT BOTTOM CURRENT
POWER CURRENT CURRENT neering from the University of New
TOTAL CURRENT BOTTOM CELL VOLTAGE TOP CELL VOLTAGE
South Wales (Sydney, Australia) and
a master’s degree in business admin-
Figure 8 This design draws 2 to 3 μA after 160 hours of balancing a 0.5F CAP-XX HW207 istration from the European Institute
supercapacitor. for Business Administration (Paris).
Mars is also a member of the IEEE.