Adaptive real-time optimal energy management strategy based on equivalent factors optimization for hybrid fuel cell system

Fuel cell, a new kind of energy supply equipment, has several advantages such as high efficiency, low noise, and no emission. Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is considered to have the potential to take the place of the conventional engine on unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). Besides the power sources in the hybrid power system, the energy management system (EMS) is crucial to operating performance. In this paper, an on-line adaptive equivalent hydrogen consumption minimization strategy (ECMS) is proposed to solve the problem of prior knowledge demand and poor adaptability of current energy management algorithms. In this presented method, a battery state of charge (SOC) constituted penalty term is designed to calculate the equivalent factor (EF), and then the equivalent factor obtained by optimization is substituted into the original objective equation to realize the real-time energy regulation. In this paper, a typical UUV load curve is used to verify the control effect under different working conditions, and the performance is compared with three conventional algorithms'. Simulation results show that the hydrogen consumption of proposed algorithm is close to the optimal solution obtained in offline environment, and it is reduced by more than 3.79% compared with the traditional online methods. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Fuel cell is a new kind of energy supply equipment with advantages of high efficiency, low noise, and no emission, suitable for unmanned underwater vehicles. The energy management system is crucial for operating performance, and an online adaptive energy management strategy is proposed. Results show that the proposed algorithm achieves close to optimal solution with reduced hydrogen consumption compared to traditional online methods.