Harvesting in electric vehicles: combining multiple power tracking and fuel-cells

Abstract

Exploitation of green energy sources is essential to diminish the deterioration of our environment. The energy harvesting, represents an alternative to achieve greater range in electric and hybrid vehicles. An energy management strategy (EMS) must be optimized to obtain the best benefits in such vehicles, which is not a trivial task. If harvesting or energy recovery devices are added, the EMS becomes a dual-purpose algorithm: minimizing fuel consumption and maximizing energy harvest through maximum
power point tracking (MPPT) controllers. Known studies consider separate EMS, one for traction and another for regenerative braking, without considering harvest devices such as solar panels, regenerative suspension, thermal generators, among others. Furthermore, the electronic power converters used, are not designed to handle such unequal power levels. In this article, an electronic platform to include multiple energy harvesting devices in a fuel-cell hybrid electric vehicle, was presented together with a multiple MPPT-EMS. The EMS is easily implementable, and considers quasiconstant cell energy extraction and filtering of current transients to the battery bank ensuring the longevity of the devices. A new mathematical model of the platform, a closed loop stability analysis, and numerical and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) validations were presented. Some experimental validation results were also provided.