Sliding mode control for fuel cell supported battery charger in vehicle-to-vehicle interaction

In typical vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) charging systems, energy transfer is provided from a battery electric vehicle (BEV) to charge the energy storage unit of another BEV. In this study, the utilization of a fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) as an energy provider is purposed to charge the energy storage unit of a BEV in V2V interaction. Since FCEVs are filled with hydrogen, it also eliminates the disadvantages of traditional BEV energy providers, such as a reduction in the amount of stored energy and the need for more time to charge fully. In the designed system, a new plug-in external V2V battery charger topology supported by an FCEV has been proposed to supply electrical energy. In order to control the energy transfer between electric vehicles (EVs), a sliding mode controller is adapted to manage the external converter interface located between vehicles. The designed controller shows improved robustness against the system dynamics uncertainties and disturbances generated by a variety of internal and external causes. In the designed section, a proton exchange membrane fuel cell with the maximum operational rating of 75 kW is used as an energy provider to feed consumer loads. The proposed system has been designed and analyzed for several loading situations from 20% to 100% loading and obtained performance results have been compared with a conventional controlled V2V battery charger system. The case studies validate that the proposed V2V charger system gives better results than the conventional controlled FC-supported V2V. The stability and robustness of output electrical waveforms are better for the designed system. In this context, the tracking error of the conventional controller is about 8% larger than that of the designed sliding mode control for dynamic load changes. The sliding mode controller has a faster settling time (approximately 0.12 s) in comparison with the conventional controlled V2V charger system. Also, mean absolute error values verify that the designed sliding mode controller operates smoothly under all cases except load transition compared to the typical control method. As a result, the case studies show that satisfactory results have been obtained for the designed system.