Sliding-mode energy management strategy for dual-source electric vehicles handling battery rate of change of current

For years, developing energy management strategies (EMS) for hybrid energy storage systems (HESS) of electric vehicles (EV) has been a topic of great interest thanks to the mutual support of energy sources. In this paper, we approach the energy management problems from the control point of view to exploit the remarkable advantages of control techniques in treating state constraints, system stability, and optimality. By that, we propose a sliding-mode strategy for the EMS of the battery–supercapacitor HESS on EVs. In order to prolong the lifespan of the battery, the rate of change in battery reference current is directly handled as the control input of the management system which is, to our best knowledge, novel in literature. Control parameters of the proposed EMS are optimally tuned by using Particle Swarm Optimization. The performance of the proposed EMS is validated by off-line simulation as well as real-time experiments on a Signal Hardware-in-the-Loop system with various comparisons, testing scenarios, and quality indices. The results and the approach of the paper illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the management system that can be applied not only to EVs but also to larger-scale energy networks in further research.