Online energy management applied to fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles

Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) are equipped with multiple power sources for improving the efficiency and performance of their power supply system. Hence, an Energy Management (EM) strategy is needed to optimise the internal power flows and to satisfy the driver's power demand. This paper deals with power flow management within a hybrid fuel cell-powered vehicle during real-time operation. The aim is real-time control of the power distribution between the fuel cell and battery to optimise the global hydrogen consumption while the vehicle performs an online driving cycle. To do so, two strategies are proposed based on fuzzy controllers. Both controllers determine the optimised operation points for the vehicle energy sources during online driving cycles and guarantee soft dynamic transition in switching between operating modes. The simulation results confirm the feasibility of both proposed strategies and encourage more research towards an actual application.