Optimal Power Management for Vehicle Hybrid Electric System using Look-ahead Route Information

For a vehicle hybrid electric (VHE) system powered by the batteries and supercapacitors (SC), a real-time optimal power management (OPM) algorithm is proposed based on the look-ahead route information in consideration of the complex traffic environment. At first, a configuration and modeling of the VHE system is addressed. Then, enlighten by the model predictive control (MPC), multiple route information including the traffic and the road terrain over a look-ahead horizon is utilized to predict the future states, and a cost function to minimize total energy loss of the VHE system is given. On above preliminaries, the dynamic programming (DP) algorithm is applied recursively over the look-ahead horizon to update the optimal power distribution between the battery and SC during the total route. Finally, the simulation results confirm that the computational time of OPM has been reduced significantly although a part of energy efficiency is sacrificed. Moreover, the behavior of OPM is similar to that of a skilful driver and thus appropriate be applied to the practical traffic environment.