Equivalent consumption minimization strategy applied to power management of fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles

Abstract

Vehicles propelled by burning fossil fuels are the vast majority of the world’s current fleet, and contribute to approximately 13% of greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere. Aware of the problema and the need to solve it, many countries have announced goals to reduce or eliminate the use of petroleum derivatives fueled vehicles in the coming decades, and major auto manufacturers have been researching and developing vehicles propelled by alternative energy sources. Among the main technologies figure fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles. However, its large-scale use still requires a lot of research and development. In such context, this paper presents a dynamical model for a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle and discusses power management strategies for it. Special attention is given to an equivalent consumption minimization strategy. Results of computational implementations are presented, which demonstrate the lower consumption of fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles compared to conventional automobiles driven by internal combustion engines, as well as the best performance obtained by the minimization technique. The developed model can easily be adapted to different types of vehicles and can serve as a basis for further studies.