Energy Management Strategies for fuel cell hybrid vehicles; an overview

For proper operation, fuel cell hybrid propulsion systems need an Energy Management Strategy (EMS). A variety of such EMSs have been presented in literature. This paper provides an overview of EMSs recently proposed in literature. It categorizes the EMSs to their theoretical background, their applicability to different electric topologies, the storage technology used and the considered vehicle type. From this inventory is concluded that for a broad range of topologies for PEM-based fuel cell hybrid propulsion systems, EMSs are available in literature. Issues left for further scientific research are the further exploration how to integrate a-priori information as trip data in the EMS and how to expand the lifetime of the fuel cell stack and/or the storage by including models and measures against degradation in an optimizing EMS. Issues left for practical implementation are an extension of the area of operation to harsh environments and cold startups and a real-time validation of proposed EMSs on actual fuel cell hybrid vehicles.