Energy management in a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle using a fuzzy logic approach

In this paper, an energy management strategy in a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) is studied. This HEV is powered by a Fuel Cell (FC), and a Li-Ion battery. The FC supplies average power during the steady state and the battery furnishes the peaks of power during transient responses due to its high power density compared to the FC. This energy management, based on a fuzzy logic approach, aims to increase the performances of the studied vehicle and the lifetime of the sources by respecting two constraints: the low response of the FC and the battery State of Charge (SoC). The fuzzy logic controller in this study has three inputs: the load power, this power error and the battery SoC and one output which is the current that the FC must deliver. The overall system was simulated under Matlab/Simulink. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the proposed power management strategy to perform a good energy split between the two sources while maintaining the imposed constraints.