Assessing the Maximum Power and Consistency of Carbon Supercapacitors Through a Facile Practical Strategy

The maximum power and consistency assessment are key technologies for the practical application of energy storage device packs such as carbon supercapacitors (SCs) connected in series. Herein, we first report a simple practical strategy to efficiently evaluate SCs’ maximum power and consistency by using the dependence of direct-current equivalent series resistance (ESRdc) on current density from small to large and demonstrate its general applicability to SCs using neutral, acidic, and alkaline aqueous electrolytes. With this strategy implemented by a computer program, a group of highly consistent SCs with safe power can be obtained, especially for high-rate consistency associated with ionic resistance under high-power operation. The ESRdc evolution is attributed to the dynamic migration resistance of ions migrating from micro- to meso-/macropores, which contains the real ion migration/storage characteristic information. This study provides real practical application possibilities for solving the problems of SC consistency assessment and rated power setting in batch.