Energy management strategy to preserve battery life in neighborhood electric vehicle

An energy-management system (EMS) for a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV) prototype of the Applied Electronics Group at the National University of Rio Cuarto is presented. The main source of energy of the NEV is a bank of lead-acid batteries, while the secondary source is a module supercapacitors. The complete system is first described, and then the energy management strategy is designed to reduce aging and preserve battery life. The proposed strategy is tested for an experimentally obtained velocity profile, including acceleration and braking maneuvers. In these tests, the proposal shows a good performance for the intended purpose. Simulation results are for validating the proposal are included in the paper.