Application of explicit model predictive control to a hybrid battery-ultracapacitor power source

• Explicit model predictive controller applied to a hybrid power source.
• The hybrid power source operates within specified constraints.
• Battery and ultracapacitor respond to low and high frequency currents respectively.

An explicit model predictive control (EMPC) system for a hybrid battery-ultracapacitor power source is proposed and experimentally verified in this paper. The main advantage of using the EMPC system is that the control law computation is reduced to evaluation of an explicitly defined piecewise linear function of the states. Separate EMPC systems for the total output current loop, the battery loop and the ultracapacitor loop are designed. This modular design approach allows evaluation of the performance of each individual EMPC system separately and also improves the convergence of the EMPC system design algorithm as the models used to design each loop are smaller. In order to protect the hybrid power source, the designed EMPC systems maintain operation of the hybrid power source within specified constraints, namely, battery and ultracapacitor current constraints, battery state of charge constraints and ultracapacitor voltage constraints. At the same time, the total output current EMPC system allocates high frequency current changes to the ultracapacitor and the low frequency current changes to the battery thus extending the battery lifetime. Presented experimental results verify that the hybrid power source operates within the specified constraints while allocating high and low frequency current changes to the ultracapacitor and battery respectively.