A Novel Energy Management Strategy Based on Efficiency Optimization for Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle

Abstract

In order to make better use of hydrogen energy for fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV), this paper designed a hybrid power supply system with proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) and lithium battery as the power sources for an electric vehicle (EV). To improve the overall efficiency of the system, this paper proposed the overall efficiency model of the system and designed an energy management strategy (EMS). The proposed EMS includes two power allocation modes of charging and discharging of the system, which can realize the allocation of the load power according to the system operating conditions and the overall efficiency. In order to prove that the proposed EMS can allocate load power according to the optimal overall system efficiency under any operating states of the fuel cell (FC) EV, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experimental platform was established. Through HIL experiments, it can be proved that the proposed EMS can not only ensure the stability of the bus voltage under input and load disturbance but also maintain the lithium battery state of charge (SOC) within the safety range. More importantly, the proposed EMS can increase the flexibility of the lithium battery in the system and improve the overall efficiency of the system.