Bandwidth-Based Control Strategy for a Series HEV With Light Energy Storage System

The twin goals of maximizing fuel economy (FE) and improving consumer acceptance by reducing the cost of the energy storage system (ESS) in a series hybrid electric vehicle (SHEV) powertrain is addressed here by using energy storage as a means for filtering drive-cycle power demands on the engine, rather than an energy source for supplying an all-electric drive mode. The concept is intended to minimize, if not eliminate, the battery in the SHEV without resorting to full-range proportional control of the engine and generator. An initial optimization study reported for a mid-size SHEV showed that a 4.5-kWh lithium-ion battery pack was still required. In this paper, a sports-car-class SHEV was studied, where the challenge is to reduce the size of the ESS even more because the available space allocation is only one fourth that of the mid-size vehicle. In this paper, a controller is developed, which allows a hybridized SHEV to be realized with a light ESS. The controller includes a duty-cycling feature that manages the engine performance in multiple efficient regions and a bandwidth-limited (BWL) proportional controller feature that limits low-bandwidth battery current. The performance of the controller has been validated for a SHEV powertrain model with an 80-V
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1.125-kWh battery, plus an 80-V
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46.4-F ultracapacitor module using a customized Autonomie vehicle model. The results show that the combined FE of the new design is increased by 13%, compared with the corresponding FE in the equivalent conventional vehicle. Additional FE improvement is possible by reducing the engine size further to reflect the average power demand imposed by real drive cycles.