Combined control/plant optimization of fuel cell hybrid vehicles

Control strategy plays as significant a role as component sizing in achieving optimum fuel economy of a fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV). In this paper, the performance optimization of FCHVs is formulated as a combined control/plant optimization problem. Inspired by stochastic dynamic programming results, a parameterizable and near-optimal controller is proposed. The proposed controller enables us to formulate and solve a combined optimization problem. The "pseudo SDP controller" can be included as design variables in system optimization problems. Simulation results demonstrate that the problem can be solved efficiently and excellent fuel economy can be achieved.