The performance of electrochemical energy storage technologies such as batteries and supercapacitors are strongly affected by operating temperature. At low temperatures (<0 °C), decrease in energy storage capacity and power can have a significant impact on applications such as electric vehicles, unmanned aircraft, spacecraft and stationary power storage. In this work, the discharge behaviour of nine different commercial electrochemical cells are evaluated, representing a variety of lithium-ion, nickel metal hydride, lead acid and supercapacitor technologies. Discharge capacity, energy, maximum power and impedance spectra with equivalent circuit analysis are compared at temperatures ranging from +20 °C to −70 °C.

Results demonstrate that despite exhibiting the greatest loss in performance with temperature reduction, the lithium-ion batteries tested provide the highest energy and power densities down to −30 °C due to higher capacity and operating voltage. At lower temperatures, the lead-acid cell gives the highest energy density and supercapacitor the highest power density. A new simplified empirical method is introduced for lithium-ion cells to determine the optimum pre-heating temperature for maximum net energy output including heating efficiency. This new method can be used to assess the benefits of different cold-start thermal management strategies for electric vehicles. It is also demonstrated that the temperature of the lithium-ion cells tested can be accurately predicted from impedance phase change at low temperatures across a range of electrode materials.

电池和超级电容器等电化学储能技术的性能会受到工作温度的强烈影响。在低温（<0°C）下，能量存储容量和功率的下降可能会对诸如电动汽车，无人驾驶飞机，航天器和固定功率存储之类的应用产生重大影响。在这项工作中，评估了九种不同的商用电化学电池的放电行为，这些放电电池代表了各种锂离子，镍金属氢化物，铅酸和超级电容器技术。在+20°C至-70°C的温度范围内，通过等效电路分析比较了放电容量，能量，最大功率和阻抗谱。

结果表明，尽管随着温度降低而表现出最大的性能损失，但由于容量和工作电压更高，所测试的锂离子电池在低至−30°C的情况下仍具有最高的能量和功率密度。在较低的温度下，铅酸电池可提供最高的能量密度，而超级电容器则可提供最高的功率密度。针对锂离子电池引入了一种新的简化的经验方法，以确定最佳的预热温度，以获得包括加热效率在内的最大净能量输出。这种新方法可用于评估电动汽车不同冷启动热管理策略的好处。