Optimal control of power electronic converters for traction applications

Energy flow and consumption are critical in modern electric drive applications within the transportation industry. Reducing losses and hardware requirements ultimately lowers a vehicles overall cost while improving performance. This paper presents an optimal control solution to reduce energy losses by limiting the peak power demands on the battery by using the power electronic converter and bus capacitor as a power buffer. From the optimal control solution, a sub-optimal proportional control method is proposed due to its ease of implementation and reduced complexity.