Virtual Inertia-Based Control and Stability Analysis for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles

To overcome the adverse effect of high-frequency output power fluctuation of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) on its operational performance, this work proposes a virtual inertia-based control (VIC) method for the hybrid powertrain of HEVs with the PEMFC and battery, which is derived from the dynamic behavior of synchronous generators. The VIC is employed as the primary layer to control the PEMFC output power, and a VIC-based power management strategy (VIC-PMS) is also proposed as the upper layer to distribute the power flow of the hybrid powertrain. The VIC can restrain the high-frequency fluctuation of the output power of the PEMFC so that it only has to afford low-frequency power, while the battery is passively subjected to high-frequency power. Furthermore, the output or input impedance model of each unit is developed, and then the stability analysis of the system by utilizing the impedance stability criterion is implemented. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed VIC and VIC-PMS is verified by the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test platform. The results are that the VIC can restrain the PEMFC high-frequency power fluctuation successfully, and the VIC-PMS can manage the power distribution of the hybrid powertrain effectively.