Power Management, Control and Design of Supercapacitor Assisted Fuel Cell-based Micro Power System for Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles are currently acting as a replacement for fossil fuel-based vehicles. Electric vehicles are environment friendly, and energy efficient. However, electric vehicles demand research attention to improve system modelling, design, reliability, stability and control issues. Power-sharing is critical for electric vehicles reliable and economical operation; hence, they need to improve the power-sharing techniques and algorithms. A supercapacitor assisted fuel cell-based micro-power system is proposed and studied in this work. A power-sharing technique is proposed to control the power flow between fuel cell and supercapacitor during different vehicle operating modes to improve system reliability, stability, and vehicle dynamics. Supercapacitor state of the charge & voltage, fuel cell response time and motor power demand are critical variables for power-sharing and decision making. The design details give information about the system component types their advantages and disadvantages. An extended discussion is carried out that explains how the motors power rating is selected subjected to road dynamics. Time-domain simulations are performed in MATLAB/Simulink that validate the effectiveness of the proposed power-sharing and control technique during different operating modes.