Hierarchical predictive control-based economic energy management for fuel cell hybrid construction vehicles

Abstract Fuel cell hybrid construction vehicles are attractive for future fuel cell applications. Model predictive control as an energy management strategy has been applied to various hybrid electric vehicles. In this paper, a hierarchical model predictive control-based energy management strategy for fuel cell hybrid construction vehicles is explored. The hierarchical model predictive control framework consists of economic and control levels. The economic level considers economic costs, including of hydrogen consumption and components use cost. Real-time optimization is implemented at the economic level to identify the optimal reference trajectory. The control layer is a model predictive control that controls the system to follow the reference trajectory. A prediction methodology-based on wavelet transformation and Levenberg-Marquardt optimised neural network is proposed for the complex load prediction of fuel cell hybrid construction vehicle. The simulations performed with cyclic loading show that the accuracy of the proposed prediction methodology is satisfactory, and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed energy management strategy. The proposed hierarchical model predictive control-based energy management strategy considering economy and controllability is important for commercial application in hybrid electric vehicles.