Supervisory control development of a fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

The design of a supervisory control system for a fuel cell plug-in hybrid vehicle is similar to that of an internal combustion engine plug-in hybrid. However, the desire to maximize the all electric range is lessened due to reduced petroleum usage and tail-pipe emissions of the fuel cell system. This paper presents a control strategy which uses a fuel cell at a low but highly efficient power level during charge depleting operation. Once the charge sustaining operating conditions are achieved the fuel cell system switches to a higher average power operating point. The developed control strategy is simulated using the Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit (PSAT).