Supercapacitors Diagnostics based on State Estimation through Extended Kalman Filter

Since the dawn of time, energy has been the keystone of evolution and it allowed to create human society as we see it today. As History teaches, first steps were time-consuming. Depending on the historical periods, discoveries were accepted and used or rejected being considered too revolutionary, or even against human thinking and nature. During XVIII century something changed: there was a general betterment in arts, in philosophy, in politics and also in technology. Afterwards, during XIX century, with the Industrial Revolution there was a technological soaring in Europe and North America. During XX-XIX centuries, energy request has increased and did also produce pollution. During last decades, due to the global crisis and thanks to a better consciousness, energy saving is a present and serious problem for global industry. And so, for mankind. During the past, we found several ways to solve how to use energy sources (muscular, water flows, steam, petrol, nuclear, etc...) and how to transport them (railways for coal, electric networks for electricity, etc...) . Several solutions have been studied and used for saving goods, such as refrigerators for food and batteries for electric saving. These have a long history of evolution and use; currently, mostly used types are those based on lead and acid (stored chemical energy is converted into electrical one, i.e. cars) and those on lithium (mostly used in low power devices, such as IX mobiles). Today, the conscious use of energy allows a greater efficiency of the devices, while storage permits to use (and reuse) energy only when necessary. Moreover, several renewable energies are used today. A serious still present problem is electric storage, partially solved with batteries. A possible solution is given by the so-called "supercapacitors ", which offer great energy density and often work complementing batteries. A supercapacitor, for its intrinsic double-layer technology, is usually called as "SC" or "DLC " or "EDLC " , scilicet (respectively) "Super-Capacitor", or "Double-Layer Capacitor", or "Electric Double-Layer Capacitor". The goal of this Thesis is an electronic system, with a supercapacitor, for storing electric energy. Together with theoretical study, simulations and laboratory results are present.