Predictive Control for the Energy Management of a Fuel-Cell–Battery–Supercapacitor Tramway

This paper evaluates a hybrid powertrain based on fuel cell (FC), battery, and supercapacitor (SC) for the “Urbos 3” tramway, which currently operates powered by SC in the city of Zaragoza, Spain. Due to the dynamic limitations of the main energy source, a proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) FC, other energy secondary sources (ESSs), battery and SC, are needed to supply the vehicle power demand. Moreover, these energy sources allow the energy recovery during regenerative braking. The different sources are connected to a dc bus through dc-dc converters which adapt their variable voltages to the bus voltage and allow the control of energy flow between the sources and the load. The components of the hybrid tramway have been modeled in Matlab/Simulink and are based on commercially available devices. The energy management system used in this work to achieve a proper operation of the energy sources of the hybrid powertrain is based on predictive control. Simulations for the real cycle of the tramway show the suitability of the proposed powertrain and control strategy.