Online Systemic Energy Management Strategy of Fuel Cell System with Efficiency Enhancement

Temperature plays a crucial role in efficiency improvement and lifespan extension of the fuel cell system which encourages energy management strategy (EMS) taking thermal into consideration. However, sluggish thermal response prevents the fuel cell performance from tracking the optimal states during scenarios with significant power variations, which was disregarded in the previous works. To solve this issue, an online hydrogen consumption minimization guarantee strategy (HCMG) including thermal management is proposed which is divided into two parts: 1) primary power distribution strategy, where a model predictive control (MPC) based EMS is employed herein to distribute power between fuel cell and battery with the objectives of minimizing hydrogen consumption as well as maintaining the state of charge (SOC), and 2) HCMG, where a modified MPC based method is exploited herein to track the reference power and optimal temperature with minimum hydrogen consumption by adjusting both the duty cycle of fan and fuel cell current. The presented approach ascertains hydrogen consumption reduction for 3.448% even under relatively extensive power changes, during which the temperature cannot reach the optimal value in a brief time. The real-time simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique compared with previous EMS methods under various driving cycles.