Experimental comparison of energy management strategies for a hybrid electric bus in a test-bench

Energy management in hybrid and electric vehicles is a key factor to improve the operational performance and meet the efficiency objectives defined in the transport sector. Thus, optimized energy management strategies (EMS), before being integrated in a real system, need to be validated in a scaled test-bench platform in order to identify the possible deviations from the expected simulation-based profiles, thus, saving time during the implementation in the real application. An economical and flexible way of validating these strategies is the Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. In this framework, this work aims to compare the experimental results of two optimized (simulation-based) EMSs applied on a hybrid electric urban bus (HEB) in terms of real-time operational performance. Both EMSs handle the proper power split behavior of the vehicle demand between a genset (internal combustion engine connected to an electric generator) and a hybrid energy storage system (combining Li-ion batteries with supercapacitors). The hardware in the test-bench consist of a scaled electrical DC grid of an HEB. This hardware platform is combined with software models allowing to emulate the real behavior of the genset, battery, supercapacitor, traction and auxiliary loads.

DOI / link: 10.1109/EVER.2018.8362389