Using supercapacitors to improve battery performance

There are many loads that create current pulses yet require a small voltage droop. This can be very demanding on battery sources. The battery voltage and current can be filtered with a capacitor. The capacitor must have sufficient energy storage to deliver the current pulse for the required time, and its equivalent series resistance (ESR) must be small enough to minimise the voltage droop. Supercapacitors meet these requirements. This paper examines performance improvement when a supercapacitor is used with a battery.