Rule-Based power sharing strategy for a fuel cell-supercapacitor vehicle

To meet increasing demands for fuel, alternative vehicles have been developed recently. Electrical hybrid vehicles are one of these alternatives and an important part of them is their energy storage systems which are used to relieve the main source which is generally a fuel cell. To ensure energy storage, the supercapacitor is considered as an interesting device because of its high power density compared to batteries. The hybridization of the main source with another source like energy storage device allows to improve the dynamic response, especially, during transient states. However, it will be necessary to apply an energy management strategy to share the energy flow between sources responding to load demand. Besides, the proposed energy management algorithm must allow us to ensure optimum hydrogen consumption. In this context, this paper deals with an energy management strategy which is based on deterministic rules. Thus, it is called rule-based strategy and it is used to share the power flow in a hybrid electric vehicle powered by a fuel cell and a supercapacitor. Simulation results under Matlab-Simulink environment prove the efficiency of the proposed energy management algorithm.