Thanks to the different advantages of fuel cell systems, especially a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) which presents the best candidate and a very efficient solution especially in vehicle applications. However, a PEMFC have a slow dynamic response which keeps it from responding quickly. Besides, the integration of auxiliary energy source guarantee to overcome these problems and provide high efficiency.
For this reason, many researchers were oriented towards using at least one additional storage energy working with fuel cell in order to guarantee power production for power train during transient phases and in order to minimize of hydrogen consumption. These power sources present very effective solutions in solving the dependence of fuel cell power generation on different driving cycle and allows the main energy source to have more flexible and reliable working performance.
Therefore, an Energy Management Approach (EMA) is always needed for electric vehicle powered with different energy source in order to manage the energy flow from different sources to supply the motor. The importance of using an efficient EMA resides in providing enough to cover the power load demand during the different driving phases. This latter must be always developed in a way that ensures that the fuel consumption of the main energy source as low as possible.
The present work consists in integrating a second energy storage device into a power train in terms to guarantee a power production and minimizing the fuel consumption. This auxiliary source chosen is a supercapacitor. In this study, in order to guarantee an optimized operation of the system a proposed control strategy is implemented to manage the flow of energy between the different sources and in order to limit the use of the fuel and benefit as much as possible the storage element.
This paper gives, in Section II, a modeling of the main and a secondary power sources separately: the PEMFC and the Maxwell supercapacitor. Next, we presents in Section III,the control strategy description for the energy storage device converters. Finally, we developed an management strategy in order to reduce the hydrogen consumption of main source.
PEM fuel cell/SC electric vehicle configuration: The studied system in