Battery lifetime extension through optimal design and control of traction and heating systems in hybrid drivetrains

In this paper, we investigate the optimal design and control of an integrated energy and thermal management system (IETMS) of a battery-assisted trolley bus that is subject to minimum battery lifetime requirements. Therefore, we jointly optimize both the control trajectories of the traction and the heating systems and the design of the thermal energy buffer. We further analyze the resulting Pareto fronts which characterize the trade-off between the battery lifetime and the energy consumption. This holistic approach fills a gap in the literature published, namely the formulation of an optimization problem that combines component sizing with a battery-health-aware IETMS. While the model derived allows the formulation of a convex optimal control problem for a given vehicle design, the combined design and control problem is non-convex. Therefore, we perform grid searches within a reasonable subset of the design space and show that the problem is smooth, has only one stationary point, and that the solver converges to the optimal solution even for the simultaneous, non-convex problem formulation. We further present a case study showing that, if an IETMS is used, a realistic bus service life without battery replacement can be achieved with a reduction of energy consumption of up to 7% on some driving missions, compared to a heuristic heating strategy. If the design of the thermal system is cooptimized, battery lifetime can be extended further by up to 15% without affecting the amount of energy consumed. In summary, our study reveals a potential to make electric transportation more efficient in terms of both energy and costs based on a holistic consideration of battery-health-aware IETMS with optimized component dimensioning.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the optimal design and control of an integrated energy and thermal management system (IETMS) for a battery-assisted trolley bus, considering minimum battery lifetime requirements. The study fills a gap in existing literature by combining component sizing with a battery-health-aware IETMS optimization problem. The results show the potential to improve the efficiency of electric transportation in terms of energy consumption and costs through a holistic consideration of battery-health-aware IETMS and optimized component dimensioning.