1.2. Literature Review
Energy storage systems (ESS) are the most critical part of electric vehicles with autonomous on-board power. This is due to the complicated set of requirements for these systems: high absolute and specific (per unit of mass and volume) energy and power, duration of operation (a large number of charge-discharge cycles), non-critical to temperature conditions, as well as low cost. Among the currently known ESSs, the closest to comprehensively meeting these requirements are electrochemical storage batteries (B), in particular of the lithium group [
6]. However, they are also characterized by a relatively short service life, the dependence of this term on operating conditions, in particular, the charging time and the values of charge-discharge currents, as well as high cost.
Since the combination of the above requirements for ESSs is not completely provided by any of the known sources or energy accumulators, hybrid energy storage systems (HESS) are often used, consisting, as a rule, of two sources that complement each other. For example: two different types of batteries, B and supercapacitors (SC), fuel cells and SCs, B and superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), etc. [
7,
8,
9,
10].
Among HESSs, the B–SC system is one of the most successful and effective [
8,
11,
12,
13]. In this system, B acts as an energy source, and the SC-pack, composed of a number of SCs, plays the role of a power source, since the specific energy of B is about an order of magnitude higher than that of SC, and the specific power of SC is one order of magnitude higher than that of B. The number of charge-discharge cycles of SC is approximately two orders of magnitude greater than that of the best B, and reaches 0.5...1 million [
14]. Therefore, in HESS, the SC-pack must undertake fast-changing and powerful energy exchange processes with the load, while the load B must be long lasting and smoothly variable and, if possible, low. This will provide a significant increase in the B service life [
13]. Since, unlike B, chemical reactions do not occur in the SC work, the latter are not critical to the temperature conditions of operation, keeping their properties practically unchanged under real environmental conditions. However, there are additional complications of the system related to the change of SC-pack voltage within wide limits depending on its state of charge (SOC) that needs to use expensive and powerful semiconductor converters. However, despite these complications, as shown in recent studies [
15], the use of B–SC HESSs in EVs is economically justified due to the reduction of the required B capacity and the extension of its service life.
Both the electrochemical B cell and the SC are low voltage (a few volts) devices. Therefore, in order to obtain operating voltages in the on-board DC-bus of the EV, which can reach several hundred volts, it is necessary to connect a large number of these devices in series. Such connections cause a voltage imbalance in charge-discharge processes due to the inevitable difference between the parameters of each cell. To eliminate this phenomenon, which will lead to underutilization of some cells and possible overcharging of others, it is necessary to use special systems for equalizing voltages or charges. These systems together with temperature and charge level monitoring systems B and SC-pack form the main part of the energy management systems (EMS) of HESS [
16].
To combine B and SC-pack in the HESS design, various system configurations are used using pulsed DC-DC converters as controlled electronic transformers. Currently, a number of configurations of B-SC HESSs have been proposed and investigated, among which semi-active, active, and combined configurations are the most common [
17,
18].
A fundamentally different group of HESS, which are being developed recently, is built according to the modular principle. Here, relatively low-voltage B modules (BM) or SC-pack modules (SCM) are combined into a powertrain using power semiconductor converters of various topologies. Thanks to the presence of additional control channels of modules, the number of degrees of freedom of the system increases significantly. This makes it possible to put additional functions on the power converters, for example: switching and regulation of the supply voltage, as a rule, multi-level, energy-efficient control of coordinates of electric drive, performance of EMS functions, in particular, equalization of voltages and charges of individual low-voltage modules, etc. The modular approach has a number of other advantages compared to the classic hardware and functional separation of the powertrain into ESS and electric drive system. The main of these advantages concerning EVs are as follows: the low voltage of one module (up to 60 V) simplifies maintenance and makes it safe; this also makes it possible to use cheap MOSFET switches, which efficiently operate at a high PWM frequency (50-100 kHz), that significantly reduces the size of chokes and capacitors in the pulse converter; a smaller number of series connected low-voltage cells simplifies the operation of the EMS; individual power modules are easier to place by distributing the weight over the EV body; during an accident, the probability of a fire is significantly reduced.
Examples of the application of modular HESS in EVs can be seen in various configurations. For example, in [
19] cascade DC-DC converters combine low-voltage BMs or hybrid B–SC modules and allow for regulation according to the multi-level principle of DC-voltage for control of the EV motor operation. Another variant of modular power supply and control are modular multilevel inverters, in which the phase voltage applied to the motor armature winding is regulated in a similar way [
20]. At the same time, only one stage of the converter works under PWM, which reduces switching losses and reduces electromagnetic interferences. Another example is the modular two-way supply of the open armature winding of a three-phase synchronous machine with permanent magnets (PMSM) through the voltage source inverters (VSI) - the so-called open-end winding (OEW) configuration [
21,
22]. A number of advantages over the traditional one-sided PMSM power supply characterizes such a solution. These advantages are similar to those of multiphase PMSMs: increased fault tolerance, lower loads on VSI switches, lower voltage of ESS modules, increased number of degrees of freedom. These advantages are achieved due to the rapid increase in the number of state combinations of two VSIs, which is equal to 22n, where n is the number of the machine phases [
23]. Thanks to this, it is possible to implement much more sophisticated modulation methods than for a three-phase machine. That allows to significantly reduce current and electromagnetic torque ripples, to more easily implement multi-level control (in particular, three- or four-level using two standard VSIs), and to weaken the excitation for operation in a wider speed range, as well as to ensure operability during possible failures in one of the inverters [
24]. All these advantages are very important for the efficient operation of EVs. In addition to the above, the increased number of degrees of freedom can be used for EMS operation, in particular, for equalizing the charges of two BMs feeding the corresponding VSIs. In works [
25,
26], SC-packs are directly integrated into electric drive systems based on three-phase machines with OEW. The open ends of the windings are connected to two or three-level VSIs, which are fed from B on one side and from SC-pack or even from HESS on the other side. The large number of degrees of freedom allows the same VSIs to be used for both drive control and EMS operation. Similar solutions can also be found in renewable energy, for example, in wind energy conversion systems (WECS), when a transformer winding or an armature winding of a synchronous generator is included as OEW and integrated with HESS with BM and SCM [
27].
Further development of the modular approach in the configuration of EV powertrain systems is related to the use of modular designs of multiphase electric machines. Such machines have a number of advantages in their characteristics compared to their three-phase counterparts [
28,
29,
30]. One of the features is the distribution of power over a larger number of phases, and therefore the nominal power per phase is reduced that makes it possible to use cheaper switches. Another feature is the improved distribution of the magnetic movement force (MMF) in the air gap of the machine that increases the electromagnetic torque and reduces its pulsations. Therefore, in general, the efficiency of the drive increases. In addition, the number of degrees of freedom increases in proportion to the number of independent phase variables of the drive that provides such an important function as fault tolerance. The multiphase implementation first spread among asynchronous machines, and more recently for PMSMs.
Among the multi-phase PMSMs, there are those that have two or more three-phase armature winding modules. At the same time, the modules can have a symmetrical configuration, when the MMFs of the windings of the same name coincide in phase, or an asymmetric configuration, when groups of three-phase windings are shifted by a certain angle θ [
31]. Since all the windings have a common magnetic wire, there are mutual inductive connections between the windings. In cases of existing nonlinearities (non-sinusoidal MMF, saturation of the magnetic circuit), as well as non-sinusoidal or unequal loading of the modules, due to their magnetic coupling, higher odd harmonics of currents appear, which lead to even harmonics of the electromagnetic torque, and also reduce the speed of torque control. In such cases, asymmetrical windings have advantages in terms of filtering properties for certain harmonics. For example, for two three-phase windings, the optimal angle of their displacement is 30 degrees, which ensures the absence of 6n ± 1 harmonics of the current and 6n harmonics of the electromagnetic torque, where n = 1, 2, ... [
32]. In addition, in order to exclude zero-sequence currents, the neutral points of the three-phase windings must be galvanic separated from each other in the case of feeding their VSIs from a common DC-bus. In the case of using galvanic decoupled power supply modules, the neutral points of the windings can be connected.
New promising solutions may have a combination of the modularity of ESS with the modularity of electric machines, which has recently become widespread in applications responsible for efficiency and reliability, in particular in aviation and transport, where the electric drive wins the place of the thermal one [
33,
34]. However, such complex modular solutions lead to a significant complication of EV powertrains, in particular their energy management. In our research, in order to simplify the modular powertrain, we apply the principle of operation of the brushless DC motor (BLDCM). For this, the simplest synchronous machine with permanent magnets placed on the surface of the rotor is used, and the switching of armature windings is carried out by the signals of cheap point Hall sensors mounted in the machine. This work is dedicated to the further development of this specified direction of research.