Energy Management via Passivity-Based Control for Battery/Supercapacitor Electric Vehicles

Abstract

A battery/supercapacitor electric vehicle is a promising configuration for vehicles with zero emissions and high efficiency. The propulsion system consists of an electric motor and the energy storage system is composed of batteries and supercapacitors. The electric vehicle is a power system in which the motor and the storage devices are coupled to a common DC bus through power converters. A proper energy management of the energy storage system is required to meet the power required by the electric motor. Since the storage devices possess complementary electric characteristics, it is expected that the controller achieves the main task of satisfying the demanded energy, exploiting these features to get substantial benefits in the vehicle driving performance and the battery life. In this article, we propose an energy management designed via passivity-based control for a battery/supercapacitor electric vehicle. The controller commands the energy storage system to satisfy the electric motor demand, reducing the high peak power undergone by the battery through the high power capacity of the supercapacitors. The methodology is tested under several demanding driving cycles and the results show that the battery life could be significantly extended.