Equivalent fuel consumption optimal control of a series hybrid electric vehicle

Improvements in hybrid electric vehicle fuel economy with reduced emissions strongly depend on their supervisory control strategy. In order to develop an efficient real-time supervisory control strategy for a series hybrid electric bus, the proposed equivalent fuel consumption optimal control strategy is compared with two popular strategies, thermostat and power follower, using backward simulations in ADVISOR. For given driving cycles, global optimal solutions were also obtained using dynamic programming to provide an optimization target for comparison purposes. Comparison simulations showed that the thermostat control strategy optimizes the operation of the internal combustion engine and the power follower control strategy minimizes the battery charging and discharging operations which, hence, reduces battery power loss and extends the battery life. The equivalent fuel consumption optimal control strategy proposed in this paper provides an overall system optimization between the internal combustion engine and battery efficiencies, leading to the best fuel economy.