A Multi-Phase Energy Management System for Hybrid Fuel Cell Drones

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant growth and demand across various applications in recent years. Battery-powered UAVs face challenges due to limited endurance. An innovative alternative solution is a fuel cell hybrid power system. However, it requires an efficient energy management method to coordinate power distribution among hybrid sources to meet the load, a task that is not suitable for drone applications with limited computational resources. Therefore, the development of lightweight computation methods is necessary. This paper proposes an innovative multi-phase energy management system by employing a low-pass filter to manage the rapid dynamic loading power and combining its signal with an offset signal derived from a designed fuzzy logic controller in order to optimize the utilization of hybrid sources and to coordinate the power distribution at high computational efficiency. In the simulation, the strategy’s performance was demonstrated effectively. It reduces the battery state of charge deviation, thereby extending the battery durability, and stabilizes the DC bus voltage. Moreover, the strategy is expected to reduce hydrogen consumption, thus fostering economic and technical benefits.