A Review on the Selected Applications of Battery-Supercapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage Systems for Microgrids

This paper presents a comprehensive categorical review of the recent advances and past research development of the hybrid storage paradigm over the last two decades. The main intent of the study is to provide an application-focused survey where every category and sub-category herein is thoroughly and independently investigated. Implementation of energy storage systems is one of the most interestingly effective options for further progression in the field of alternative energy technology. Apart from a meticulous garnering of the energy resources regulated by the energy storage, the main concern is to optimize the characteristic integrity of the storage devices to achieve a practically techno-economic size and operation. In this paper, hybrid energy storage consisting of batteries and supercapacitors is studied. The fact that the characteristic of batteries is mostly complementary to that of supercapacitors, hybridizing these storage systems enhances their scope of application in various fields. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to present an inclusive review of these applications. Specifically, the application domain includes: (1) regulation of renewable energy sources, (2) contributions to grid regulation (voltage and frequency compensation, contribution to power system inertia), (3) energy storage enhancements (life cycle improvement, and size reduction), (4) regenerative braking in electric vehicles, (5) improvement in wireless power transfer technology. Further, this review also descriptively highlights the control strategies implemented in these domains of applications. The application-oriented review explicates the principle advantages with the hybridization of battery and supercapacitor energy storage systems that can be used as an insight for further development in the field of energy storage technology and its applications.