Rule-Based Energy Management Strategy for a Fuel Cell Long-Haul Truck

A fuel cell system (FCS) in a long-haul truck requires an energy storage system (ESS) as a buffer and a device for continuous braking capability, such as a brake resistor (BR). Hence, the complexity of the high-voltage direct current (DC)-link (HVDC) increases due to the high number of power sinks and sources. At the same time, this fact enables a great potential to improve the truck efficiency. In this paper, we address the requirements of the HVDC and present a straightforward parametrizable energy management strategy (EMS) with low computation effort. The rule-based approach continuously evaluates the sinks and source balance to overcome the system complexity and protect the battery from overcharging and deep discharging. With the usage of different characteristic curves, we explicitly utilize the battery capacity to increase the total efficiency of the fuel cell long-haul truck (FCLHT). Simultaneously, we consider the boundary constraints of the FCS and battery to reduce the progress of the aging process. Moreover, we introduce a model of the HVDC, which also considers battery aging, to demonstrate the performance of the proposed energy management compared to a reference strategy (2020 IEEE VTS Challenge) in a simulation. With a specific parameterization of the EMS, we achieve a hydrogen saving of 7.5% without adverse effects on the aging process of the FCS and the battery of the FCLHT.