Hello All, Im an new to this form but not to forums in general, I know a lot of people are tire kickers and just looking for attention. Maybe I am that person I do not know. What i do know is that i have been toying with this idea ever sense i saw my first rail locomotive and had a drivers license.

My idea is this:

Im working on building a scaled down model of a trains propulsion system to use in my truck, a Chevy ZR2 Blazer I picked up for 500$ with no engine or trany. I want to put in a 60 kW Diesel Genset, 2 52kW AC Induction motors and the other needed inverters and control components. I also want to use a modestly sized battery pack to store the majority of the power. this will allow me to run the diesel engine only when the batteries are low, thus keeping each part of the system as efficient as possible, I cant run on pure batteries because of where I drive, how much weight i have to carry and the sheer distance each day would make the batteries MASSIVE!!!

I also would like to include a supercap to suck up the regen power for stop and starts, and to also help to absorb the extra power the generator is making as each cell of the battery system comes to full charge. The battery pack I am using has individual charge controlled cells. this means as each cell comes to full charge it is bypassed for charging. This is the extra power I do not wish to waste. hence the cap

My questions is where in the heck can i find a cap that can take the voltages i need 120-480VDC, My Generator will be set for for 277V so my DC Buss Voltages should be around there also. I have toyed with the idea of going to a 480V configuration and simply slowing the generator down to make sure i don't peak over 480V (480VDC on the spot is the cutout point for the inverters) But anyways this is my plan and my question.

I am not that familiar with this stuff, Im a EE student but i have a long ways to go before i really know anything along this line. I do know AC and 3P as I use it in what i do for work. Any help would be greatly appreciated in this. Im not going to lie, i have no way of funding this right now, but rather then spend my time hoping and wishing i figure i would work on the details till im blue in the face and then can someday afford to do this little project.


At the bottom is a one-line drawing showing how each system will be tied together. by though here is that as the cap is charged and then discharge it will disconnect from the system preventing a power leach effect

Cool project! Keep us posted on your progress. No expert on this topic, but a few thoughts. See also some of the previous discussions here.
The EEStor project uses high voltage supercaps. They are actually using a printing process to manufacture them. Last I heard things were moving along ahead of schedule - then nothing.
Picoelectronics.com makes a huge line of DC/DC converters including boost models all the way up to 10kV! High power models up to 1ooV and 400W. You will probably end up using DC/DC converters to bridge the gap. Or maybe you could apply the caps at the battery cell level?
I thinks using the UCs for short term power demands is right on. But they won't be a practical way to store larger amounts of excess power when the batteries are charged.

PS. Nice diagram attached to your post. How / what did you use to make it?

Thank you for the kind words.

I have hit a snag how ever..... $$$$

I wanted to use motors and inverters from brusa..... but they are crazy!!! the drive system i want to build will cost me ~$170,000.00 and thats only the motors, inverters and DC/DC Converter......


But i press on with hope they either see the light and lower their prices or something else hits the market.

The SuperCaps will only be connected to the system if they are either going to be receiving power either from heavy breaking or while the battery pack is in its last stage of charing the battery. other then that it will disconnect.

The drawing was done in Autocad... nothing special didn't take but 5 min.

I will check out the other sources you have on caps, thanks you for you help