A Power Split Control Algorithm for Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles using Batteries or Supercapacitors as Auxiliary Storage System

In recent years there is growing interest for fuel cell electric vehicles (FCVs) as electric battery technology fails to date to ensure an autonomy comparable to that of conventional vehicles. An FCV requires an auxiliary storage system to cope with peak power demand and to recovery of braking energy. In the paper, we propose a power split control algorithm able to manage the power flow between fuel cell and the auxiliary storage system according to their dynamic behavior. In particular, we define the lumped resistance of fuel cell, lithium battery and supercapacitor in order to estimate their maximum allowed current variation. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we test the power split control algorithm by using different drive cycle. Several simulation results are presented and discussed.