The Operation Method of Hybrid Power Supply System Combining Lithium Polymer Battery and Supercapacitor for Industrial Drones

Abstract

This paper proposes a hybrid power supply system for commercial drones. The proposed hybrid power supply system consists of a lithium polymer battery, a supercapacitor, and a power converter for charging the supercapacitor. In the proposed system, the supercapacitor is pre-charged with a lithium polymer battery through a power converter, and the supercapacitor first supplies the power required for the drone’s initial startup and lift-up. Afterward, in the section where the power consumption of the drone is low, the battery and the supercapacitor supply power together, minimizing the stress on the battery. To verify the proposed hybrid power supply system, a computer simulation was conducted, the actual hardware was fabricated, and experiments were performed.

Keywords

• hybrid power supply system
• supercapacitor
• lithium-ion capacitor
• H-bridge buck–boost converter
• UAV