Ultracapacitor As A Backup Power Supply

Today, power supply is the most important thing in our daily life. All appliances need power supply to ensure the appliances can operate properly. Most people have problems with the power supply especially when the power disturbances occur. There are many types of power disturbances such as voltage dips and surges, harmonics, or voltage spikes. Interruptions of power disturbances cause difficulties and great monetary causes especially for those who are doing the businesses at home such as internet business. These groups of people depend on internet and computer to generate their income. Modem and computer need a power supply before they can use it. However, their business will ruin if power disturbances occur. This problem burdens them and cause great monetary causes. The objective of this project is to design a backup power supply prototype for the home usage. In other words, backup power supply that will be designed is the mini Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) system. This system will use the bank of ultracapacitors as the energy source. Ultracapacitors can replace UPS batteries because it is able to store more energy like a battery. They have extremely high energy densities and exhibits low Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR). Ultracapacitor are very strong in power density, safety, environmental and performance efficiency. Ultracapacitor can accept charges at high rate without degradation and can deliver power when needed. The main tools of electronic components that will be used in this project are UPS system design as the system to backup power, ultracapacitors to store the energy, voltage regnlator to maintain constant voltage level and bulb as the load. There are two methods that can use; by placing the ultracapacitors in parallel and placing the ultracapacitors in series. Both methods have the advantages and disadvantages. When placing the ultracapacitors in paralle~ the capacitance is bigger but voltage rating is smaller. However, when placing the ultracapacitors in series, the capacitance is smaller but the voltage rating is bigger. Small capacitance means the discharging time is fuste