Adaptive Energy Management Strategy to Avoid Battery Temperature Peaks in Fuel Cell Electric Trucks

Thermal management is essential in electric vehicles to preserve battery life. In particular, avoiding temperature peaks is critical to prevent accelerated degradation. The battery thermal management problem is crucial in fuel cell electric trucks due to the heavy vehicle weight, especially on mountain or hilly roads. Therefore, this paper proposes an energy management strategy that reduces battery degradation by limiting its usage at high temperatures to allow its cooldown and avoid peaks. The energy management strategy is adaptive because the main control parameters for the fuel cell/battery power-split are adjusted depending on the battery temperature. The comparison between adaptive and non-adaptive strategies proves the effectiveness of the proposed formulation in avoiding temperature peaks without hindering fuel consumption or fuel cell degradation. The robustness of the proposed energy management strategy is validated with simulations of several real-world driving cycles with various speed and elevation profiles. Copyright (c) 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license