Battery thermal- and cabin comfort-aware collaborative energy management for plug-in fuel cell electric vehicles based on the soft actor-critic algorithm

While the air conditioning system provides a comfortable thermal environment for vehicle occupants, it is also one of the most energy-intensive auxiliary devices in modern vehicles. Meanwhile, the operating characteristic of the battery system significantly impacts the economic and safety performance of the vehicle. To improve the energy efficiency of plug-in fuel cell electric vehicles, this paper proposes a collaborative energy management strategy based on the soft actor-critic algorithm, considering battery thermal management and cabin thermal comfort management. First, the soft actor-critic algorithm is implemented in energy management research for fuel cell electric vehicles. Second, by establishing a control-oriented vehicle-integrated thermal management model and adopting a novel air conditioning system design, the coordinated optimization of the battery thermal management and cabin thermal comfort management is achieved. Finally, the collaborative energy management strategy based on the soft actor-critic algorithm is presented to minimize the total operating cost, while maintaining the optimal battery temperature range and cabin thermal comfort. The online testing results demonstrate that the implemented energy management strategy based on the soft actor-critic algorithm can achieve 96.06% fuel economy of the dynamic programming benchmark methodology, while significantly improving computational efficiency. Moreover, the proposed collaborative energy management strategy can effectively improve the overall vehicle fuel economy, manage the battery temperature within the optimal operating range, and maintain cabin thermal comfort. However, with the prolonged operation of the air conditioning system, the total operating cost of the vehicle increases considerably, up to 28.12% or even more, indicating that it is a highly energy-consuming component.