MPC and Filtering-Based Energy Management in Fuel Cell/ Battery/ Supercapacitor Hybrid Source

A hydrogen fuel cell as the main source for vehicle application needs to be combined with other energy storage to tackle its drawbacks which slowly responds to load dynamics and the fuel starvation phenomenon. Battery and supercapacitors could provide faster response, also this combination could prolong their lifetime. Each source is connected to a dc-dc converter then its output is connected in parallel to a dc bus to supply the load. Battery and supercapacitors use the bidirectional converter to be able to operate regenerative braking in a vehicle application, to save power generated by the load. Configuration of the three sources needs to be managed by an energy management system to efficiently utilize their benefits. Since the fuel cell, battery, and supercapacitor should be controlled to work under their safe operation region, the proposed energy management system controls their current by filtering-based strategy, dc voltage bus control, and a model predictive control that is used to generate optimal switching signal for the converters to minimize the switching losses. The proposed system has been simulated in MATLAB/Simulink which showed the ability to manage the current of the sources and track dc bus voltage. The further simulation showed the effect of an increasing horizon of the MPC could reduce the current ripple which in turn reduces the switching losses.