Eureka! Institutional Repository

Alternative energy sources have begun to attract attention due to increased oil price and greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the field of transportation. A big amount pf researches and experiments, in this area, have been conducted on hybrid electric vehicles and specifically on fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). These particular vehicles are based primarily on a fuel cell stack and secondarily on an auxiliary energy storage device, which is usually a battery. Their high efficiency and low emissions make them a fantastic substitute for internal combustion engines. However, in order to maximize their potentials, a well-designed power management, that optimally shares the power demand between the fuel cell and the battery is required. In this study, at first, the performance of an existing simulated FCEV model is presented and analyzed. Then, a power management strategy, that focuses on fuel economy, fuel cell and battery life cycles and overall efficiency, is designed, which also takes into account the limitations of the system. The Model Predictive Control (MPC) method is used, which based on predictions of the dynamics of the model, attempts to optimize the system. The analysis of the simulation results was performed using the environment of Matlab/Simulink in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.