If the main usage for the large capacitor storage is to collect the energy from braking and then use that mainly as a starting boost charge instead of using the battery only, I can see how it would help. I would reduce the number of recharge cycles on the batteries (prolong life), reduce the starting currents needed from the battery (prolong life) and provide added power during starts. If the cap bank power was designed to be electrically in series will the battery voltage you could run the cap charge to zero to extract maximum energy. Just running them in parallel seems to be mainly a wasted effort.
sorry for the last post, i read it over and yeah, it made no sense. sometimes I think faster than I type.
I believe that the caps need to be drawn down FIRST to zero to get the full energy from them. Maxwell assures me they can handle this with no problems or damage. In parallel they have given benefit to others that are experimenting with my same setup that I am trying to design. the battery temperatures have been nice and low and the damaging heat that is created when the batteries so a high rate, 600 dc amps, isnt created. Then after the caps are drawn to zero the batteries take over after the hard work has been done. The hard work being the starting the vehicle from 0 mph.
In order to have that design, I will not always get enough energy from regen, in fact in my dc system I wont have regen ;( that means I need to power the caps back up for the next launch of the vehicle. I can do that in two ways: the first being I can have a generator recharge the caps. the second I can have a controller control the amount of current that the batteries give to the capacitors. I have to have control of some kind, because when capacitors are at zero, and the batteries attempt to fill the capacitors, they will see enormously higher amperage then they were designed for and die slowly from heat or die quickly from explosion.
the option of the generator can be that when the caps are empty, the generator starts up and fills the caps, when the caps are full, the generator turns off. with an electric start generator this is possible.
I like the idea of putting them in series with the batteries. The controller I am using can operate with a battery pack voltage of 10 vdc to 300 vdc.
I would think that if I put the capacitors in series with the batteries with the capacitors first and then the batteries second, and I bought two more capacitors and brought my voltage for the capacitors up to 145.8 (54 capacitors) and put them in series with a 144 pack of batteries Ill have a total voltage of 289.8. I can then put the generator behind the batteries and through a bridge rectifier I could then push roughly (untested yes, I have the bridge rectifier and a 15000 watt generator) 200 volts through. the generator would only be a range extender, not on at all times.
when at home charging at the end of the day I can have a switch that i disconnect the battery pack from the capacitors and generator and charge them by themselves.
this entire setup would be based on if I could put the 145.8 capacitors in between the controller and batteries all in series. Ive actually be told by the controller engineer that this would work. BUT my research shows that all those trying to use caps in their vehicles have only put them in parallel.