498 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 61, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2012
Two-Stage Energy Management Control of
Fuel Cell Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Considering Fuel Cell Longevity
Bo Geng, Student Member, IEEE, James K. Mills, Member, IEEE, and Dong Sun, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—As the dependence on fossil fuel increases in the
transportation sector, more attention has been paid to the en-
ergy management control of proton exchange membrane fuel
cell (PEMFC) plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). In this
paper, the energy management control problem for a series plug-in
PEMFC/Li-ion battery hybrid midsize sedan is formulated and
investigated using a two-stage controller (TSC). The control ob-
jective is to minimize hydrogen consumption and simultaneously
protect PEMFC health. The proposed TSC consists of two con-
trollers designed in two stages with different control functions.
During the first design stage, a predictive controller is developed
using the telemetry equivalent consumption minimization strategy
(T-ECMS) approach to predict the global battery state-of-charge
(SOC) optimality trend and local control reference, without regard
for the PEMFC health constraints. During the second stage of
design, a tracking controller is designed to track the local control
reference with respect to the PEMFC health constraints and other
physical limitations at the current control step, which ensures that
the system follows the optimal battery SOC reference over a long
time horizon. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed TSC is com-
pared with the T-ECMS and an electric vehicle controller (EVC)
under the Matlab/Simulink software environment. The results
demonstrate that the TSC achieves a reasonable tradeoff between
hydrogen fuel consumption and PEMFC health protection.
Index Terms—Energy management control, equivalent con-
sumption minimization strategy (ECMS), fuel cell health, plug-in
hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV).
I. I NTRODUCTION
W ITH increasing demand for fossil fuel and public con-
cern about environmental issues, there is growing inter-
est in the development of alternative energy sources to replace
internal combustion engines in the transportation sector. The
proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) [1] has high
potential for use as a power source for vehicles due to essen-
tially zero CO2 and other hazardous emissions, high energy
efficiency, and relatively low operating temperature.
Manuscript received August 25, 2011; accepted November 11, 2011. Date
of publication November 24, 2011; date of current version February 21, 2012.
This work was supported by the City University of Hong Kong under Grant
7002586 and Grant 7002715. The review of this paper was coordinated by
Mr. D. Diallo.
B. Geng and D. Sun are with the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical
Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail:
bogeng2@student.cityu.edu.hk; medsun@cityu.edu.hk).
J. K. Mills is with the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engi-
neering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G8, Canada (e-mail:
mills@mie.utoronto.ca).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVT.2011.2177483
0018-9545/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
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Due to its slow response dynamics, the PEMFC cannot
address rapid variations in vehicle power demand; hence,
an additional energy storage system is required to assist the
PEMFC [2], such as a Li-ion battery stack [3] or ultracapacitor
[4], or both [5], [6]. In addition, with the recent advent of
high-performance Li-ion battery technology and fast efficient
battery-charging techniques, PHEVs, which are equipped with
large-capacity chargeable Li-ion batteries, are anticipated to
offer one solution for the next generation of vehicles [7].
Therefore, the PEMFC/battery PHEV is a promising vehicle
configuration based on the current available technology.
With the objective of optimizing a proposed performance
metric, the energy management control problem [8], [9] is
usually formulated as an optimal control problem constrained
by the physical operation limitations and dynamics of the power
train. The energy management control problem for hybrid
electric vehicles (HEVs) has been extensively studied in the
literature using many approaches that are classified as heuristic
methods [10], [11], dynamic programming (DP) [12], [13],
stochastic DP (SDP) [14], [15], equivalent consumption min-
imization strategy (ECMS) [16]–[18], Pontryagin’s minimum
principle (PMP) [19], [20], and the model predictive control
method [21], [22].
The energy management control problem posed by PHEVs
has more control flexibility and freedom since these vehicles are
equipped with larger battery stacks and a longer electric opera-
tional range is expected. To maximally benefit from inexpensive
grid electricity power, the battery is generally fully charged to a
high state-of-charge (SOC) level at the beginning of a trip and
completely depleted to a low SOC level at the end of the trip.
Therefore, the existing energy management strategies for HEVs
cannot be directly applied to PHEVs.
Energy management controllers for HEVs have been ex-
tended to PHEVs. In [23], the DP approach is implemented
online for a PHEV by introducing a trip model to ensure the de-
pletion of the battery at the end of the trip. In [24] and [25], the
ECMS approach is applied to a PHEV, based on the heuristic
concept that the battery SOC is linearly depleted in proportion
to the trip driving distance. In [26] and [27], the SDP is
extended to PHEVs to study the impact of battery capacity and
health issues. In [28] and [29], rule-based control strategies are
designed for PHEVs to deplete the battery SOC at the end of the
cycle using prediction information from the telemetry system.
Due to slow response dynamics, the PEMFC is not capable
of tracking rapid powertrain load variations. This is because
GENG et al.: ENERGY MANAGEMENT CONTROL OF FUEL CELL PHEVs CONSIDERING FUEL CELL LONGEVITY 499

rapidly changing load demand profiles may cause fuel starva-

tion, flooding, membrane drying, and pressure imbalance across
the fuel cell membrane, which can damage the PEMFC health
and shorten its longevity. Therefore, from the perspective of
PEMFC health and longevity protection, additional bounds on
the control rate of change and PEMFC switching frequency
should also be considered in the design of the energy manage-
ment controller. As seen from the literature, most published
papers are concerned about either the reduction in hydrogen Fig. 1. Vehicle topology of the PEMFC PHEV.
consumption [30], [31] or the PEMFC longevity [5], [32]. A TABLE I
systematic investigation considering integrated PEMFC protec- S PECIFICATIONS OF THE V EHICLE C OMPONENTS
tion and hydrogen consumption is required.
In this paper, with the control objective of minimizing the hy-
drogen consumption and simultaneously protecting the PEMFC
health, a TSC is proposed in a two-stage design framework,
each stage with different control functions. During the first
controller design stage, a predictive controller is devised using
the T-ECMS approach introduced in [33] to predict the global
SOC optimality trend and local control reference, without
consideration for the PEMFC health constraints. The control
with the direct current (dc) bus via power electronics. In this
input reference signal, which was derived from the predictive
powertrain, a 30-kW low-temperature PEMFC acts as a range
controller, cannot be directly input to the PEMFC. However,
extender, due to the advantages of high efficiency, high power
this approach can provide an optimal reference for the tracking
density, and zero emissions. A Li-ion battery stack, which
controller designed in the second control design stage. The
features high power density, high energy density, and a long
tracking controller is designed to track the control reference
lifetime, is used as an energy storage system. The role of the
derived from the predictive controller, considering the PEMFC
battery stack is twofold: First, it can assist the PEMFC during
health constraints and other physical limitations at each control
rapid vehicle power changes; second, it can recover part of the
step. Meanwhile, the tracking controller, over the long time
braking energy through regenerative braking. Furthermore, the
horizon, also guarantees that the system will follow the optimal
battery can be externally charged at a charge station to benefit
battery SOC reference, which represents the global optimum
from the inexpensive grid power.
for the powertrain system. The advantages of the TSC are
A 100-kW induction motor is used to drive the PEMFC
summarized as follows: 1) Both hydrogen consumption reduc-
PHEV via a dc/ac inverter due to the low cost, mature technol-
tion and the PEMFC health protection are considered in an
ogy, and good maintenance properties of the induction motor.
integrated design procedure. 2) An instantaneous optimization
A transmission is not necessary because the electric motor
control problem must be solved online, which makes the con-
exhibits good torque performance in low-speed operational
troller implementation cost extremely small. 3) The prediction
range, and only a fixed-ratio differential is used to reduce high
information requires only the vehicle position during the trip,
motor speed.
which can be easily detected.
For simplicity but without loss of generality, the losses of the
This paper is organized as follows: Section II presents the
power conditioners are neglected. The power flow in the power
PEMFC/battery PHEV powertrain configuration, detailed sys-
train is given by
tem dynamic model, and energy management control prob-
lem formulation, considering both integrated hydrogen energy Pdc = Pbat + Pfc (1)
consumption optimization and PEMFC protection. Section III
proposes the TSC in a two-stage controller (TSC) design frame- where Pdc , Pbat , and Pfc are the power flow of the vehicle dc
work, which comprises a predictive controller designed in the bus, battery, and PEMFC, respectively. The vehicle component
first stage and a tracking controller in the second stage. In data are shown in Table I. The component sizes are heuristically
Section IV, the TSC is compared with both the electric vehicle and conservatively selected for this case study. However, these
controller (EVC) and T-ECMS to validate its effectiveness choices will not jeopardize the effectiveness in validation of the
in reducing energy consumption and protecting the PEMFC control performance of the proposed TSC. The optimal compo-
health. In Section V, the conclusions are given. nent sizing methodology of the PEMFC PHEV will be studied
in the future work and is not within the scope of this paper.
II. O PTIMAL E NERGY M ANAGEMENT
C ONTROL P ROBLEM F ORMATION
B. MT PHEV Modeling Dynamic Modeling of PEMFC
A. Powertrain Configuration and Specification PHEV Powertrain
This paper investigates the energy management of a series 1) PEMFC Dynamic Modeling: In this paper, a PEMFC
fuel cell plug-in hybrid sedan with its configuration shown system consisting of 390 cells in series is modeled using
in Fig. 1. In this system, the fuel cell and battery interfaces a static model [15]. In this model, the net power from the

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500 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 61, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 2. Comparison of the PEMFC net power, stack power, compressor power,
and auxiliary power versus the hydrogen consumption rate.
fuel cell system Pnet is calculated as the difference between
the electrical power from the fuel cell stack and the power
consumed by the compressor and auxiliary components (such
as the coolant pump, radiator fan, etc.), i.e.,
Pnet = N Vfc ifc − Pcp − Paux (2)
where N is the number of fuel cells included in the stack;
Pcp and Paux are the power consumed by the compressor and
auxiliary components, respectively; and Paux is assumed to be
constant. Vfc and ifc is the output voltage and current of a single
fuel cell, respectively. Vfc is derived by
Vfc = E − Vact − Vohm (3)
where E is the thermodynamic potential, Vact is the activation
loss, and Vohm is the ohmic loss, all of which are calculated
using data and formulas in [34].
Assuming, without loss of generality, that the ambient air is
dry, the hydrogen mass flow rate and compressor air mass flow
rate can be calculated as follows:
N MH2 ifc
ṁH2 = (4)
2F
λO2 N Mair ifc
ṁcp = (5)
4ωO2 F
where MH2 and Mair are the molar mass of hydrogen and air,
respectively; ωO2 represents the molar fraction of oxygen in the
air; and λO2 is the excess oxygen ratio. The power consumption
of the compressor is given by
  γ−1  friction brake force, which is used to assist the brake when the
Cp Tamb pcp γ
Pcp = − 1 ṁcp (6)
ηm ηcp pamb
where pcp is the pressure at the compressor outlet, pamb is the
atmospheric pressure, Cp is the specific heat capacity of air,
γ is the ratio of the specific heats of air, Tamb is the ambient
temperature, ηm is the compressor motor efficiency, and ηcp is
the compressor efficiency.
Using the aforementioned static model, Fig. 2 shows the
PEMFC net power, stack power, compressor power, and aux-
iliary power consumption as a function of the hydrogen con-
sumption rate. Fig. 3 shows the efficiency curve of the fuel cell
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Fig. 3. PEMFC efficiency curve.
system. As shown in Fig. 2, to maintain the PEMFC operation,
a minimal hydrogen flow rate of 0.0127 g/s is required to supply
the compressor and auxiliary devices, with this operational state
termed fuel cell “idle.”
2) Li-Ion Battery Stack Modeling: In this paper, the Li-ion
battery stack is described using a simple but effective internal
resistance model [12], which is given as

dSOC Vo − Vo2 − 4Rbat Pbat
=− (7)
dt 2Rbat Qbat
where Qbat is the battery capacity, Vo is the battery open-circuit
voltage, and Rbat is the battery resistance. Both Vo and Rbat are
functions of battery SOC.
3) Electric Motor: The electrical dynamics of the electric
drive motor is ignored, because its timescale is much smaller
than that of the vehicle power train. Then, the ac motor is
modeled with a motor efficiency map, i.e.,
ηm = η(τm , wm ) (8)
where ηm , τm , and wm are the motor efficiency, torque, and
rotation speed, respectively.
4) Vehicle Dynamics: The power train is modeled as a point
mass
dv 1
M = Ftrac +Fbrak −fr M g cos α− ρAf CD v 2 −M g sin α
dt 2
(9)
where Ftrac is the vehicle traction force; and Fbrak is the
braking power exceeds the electrical regenerative capacity. M
is the vehicle mass; v is the vehicle velocity; and fr , g, α, ρ,
Af , and CD represent the rolling resistance, acceleration of
gravity, road slope, air density, the vehicle frontal area, and
aerodynamic drag coefficient, respectively.
Then, the vehicle dc bus power is calculated backward,
reversing the power flow path as follows:
Pdc = Ftrac v · (ηm ηdif )−sgn(Ftrac ) (10)
where ηdif is the efficiency of the differential. The powertrain
dynamic parameters are given in Table II.
GENG et al.: ENERGY MANAGEMENT CONTROL OF FUEL CELL PHEVs CONSIDERING FUEL CELL LONGEVITY
TABLE II
V EHICLE P OWERTRAIN S PECIFICATIONS
C. Energy Management Control Problem Formation
The energy management control problem for the PEMFC
PHEV is an optimal control problem, with the objective of
minimizing the hydrogen consumption during the trip while
respecting all the component operational limitations. The hy-
drogen consumption is
Tf
JH2 = ṁH2 dt
0 that the PEMFC is powered off if the null power com-
where Tf is the duration of the driving cycle. The operational
constraints include system dynamic constraints (a), state con-
straints (b), control constraints (c) and boundary constraints (d),
and PEMFC health constraints (e) and (f).
(a) Dynamic constraints: The only system state for the opti-
mization problem is the battery SOC, and it is governed
by its dynamic equation through the trip, i.e.,
dSOC
= f (SOC, Pbat , Pdc ).
dt
(b) State constraints: To protect the battery from aging or
performance degradation, the battery SOC is bounded by
SOCmin ≤ SOC ≤ SOCmax .
(c) Control constraints: Due to physical constraints, the
PEMFC and battery output power is bounded by
Pfc,min ≤ Pfc ≤ Pfc,max
Pbat,min ≤ Pbat ≤ Pbat,max .
(d) Boundary constraints: To maximally benefit from inex-
pensive grid power electricity, at the beginning of the
trip, the battery is usually charged to its upper threshold,
and at end of the cycle, the battery SOC is required to be
depleted to its lower threshold
SOC(0) = SOCmax , SOC(Tf ) = SOCmin .
(e) PEMFC command change rate constraints: This quasi-
static model does not reflect the transient dynamics of
the fuel cell system. Given rapid changes in fuel cell
power demand, large variations of the system states will
be generated, which will endanger the health of the fuel
cell stack. To avoid these large variations, the PEMFC
is only permitted to track slow command signals, and
therefore, the derivative of the PEMFC power command
is bounded by [35]
ΔPfc,min ≤ ΔPfc,k ≤ ΔPfc,max
where ΔPfc,k = Pfc,k − Pfc,k−1 , and subscript k de-
notes the current time. The k − 1 and k + 1 appearing
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501
Fig. 4. Schematic illustration of the TSC.
later denote the last time step and the next time step,
respectively.
(11) (f) PEMFC operation state change constraints: It is assumed
mand is given. Hence, the PEMFC is switched on or
off according to the power command. To avoid frequent
on–off cycles of the PEMFC and protect its longevity, the
PEMFC operational state is not permitted to frequently
change [36]. If the PEMFC state residence time tfc is
defined as the time it has remained at the ON (efc = 1)
or OFF (efc = 0) state, then
(12) tfc ≥ tr (18)
where tr is the selected residence time parameter, and efc
is the PEMFC operation state variable.
(13)
III. T WO -S TAGE E NERGY M ANAGEMENT
C ONTROLLER D ESIGN
(14) In this section, a two-stage control strategy is proposed to
(15) solve the energy management control problem in Section II-C.
During the first stage, a predictive controller is designed to
optimize JH2 under constraints (a)–(d) using the T-ECMS.
However, the resultant controls cannot be directly applied to
the PEMFC since they may be incompatible with constraints
(e) and (f) and reduce the PEMFC lifetime. However, the
predictive controller can provide an optimal control and SOC
reference input to the tracking controller designed in the second
(16)
stage. The tracking controller is required to track the command
reference subject to constraints (e) and (f). The flowchart of the
TSC design is shown in Fig. 4.
A. Predictive Controller Design
The predictive controller is designed based on the T-ECMS
developed in [33] for microturbine-powered PHEVs. The
T-ECMS minimizes JH2 subject to constraints (a–d) only using
instantaneous information of vehicle position, dc bus power,
(17) and battery SOC. For illustrative purposes, the T-ECMS ap-
proach is briefly introduced in Section III-A1.
1) T-ECMS: Using PMP, the global optimal energy manage-
ment control problem is converted to an instantaneous optimal
502 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 61, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 6. Schematic illustration of the telemetry ECMS.

Fig. 5. Statistical relationship between the energy ratio and the initial value of
the EF.

problem by defining the equivalent factor (EF) s, i.e.,


o Pelec
Pfc = arg min ṁH2 (Pfc )+s(t)· (19)
Pfc,min ≤Pfc ≤Pfc,max Hf
Pbat,min ≤Pbat ≤Pbat,max
SOC(0)=SOCmax
SOC(Tf )=SOCmin

where superscript “o ” represents variables related to the op-

timality, and Hf is the lower heating value of the hydrogen
(120 MJ/kg). Pelec is the power flow through the battery cal-
culated by [37] Fig. 7. Predictive controller designed based on the T-ECMS.
dSOC
Pelec = − Vo Qbat . (20)
To reject the influence of the parameter uncertainty, the
dt
statistical rule (24) is updated in real time by estimating γg (t)
Based on PMP, the EF is constrained by through the trip as follows:
s dVo ∂ 
b (SOC(t)−SOCmin )Qbat Vnom η dis
ṡ = − −s f (SOC, Pbat , Pdc ). (21) aγ + γ , γg (t) > 1
Vo dt ∂SOC s(t) = Êg (r) (25)
0, γg (t) ≤ 1.
The EF is demonstrated to be related with the energy ratio
defined for PHEVs. The energy ratio at time t is defined as The EF regulation rule (25) only requires vehicle position
Eg (t) information from the vehicle telemetry system and SOC from
γg (t) = (22) onboard sensors and is robust to large control parameter errors.
(SOC(t) − SOCmin ) Qbat Vnom η dis
The schematic of the T-ECMS is shown in Fig. 6. The input
where Vnom is the nominal battery voltage, and η dis is the of the T-ECMS is the energy gap rate of decrease parameter K
average discharge efficiency of the battery. Eg (t) is the energy and vehicle dc power demand Pdc , whereas the output is the
gap parameter, which can be estimated by PEMFC control command Pfc and battery SOC reference.

2) Predictive Controller: Using the T-ECMS, two optimal
K × L × (1 − r), r ≤ r0 reference signals are given by the predictive controller in this
Êg (t) = 1 (23)
K × L × (1 − r) × (1 − rκ ) κ , r > r0 section: a PEMFC control reference Pfc,ref and a SOC trajec-
where L is the total length of the trip. r is the vehicle position tory reference SOCref . The two reference signals are generated
during the trip. K is the estimated energy gap rate of decrease, via two different T-ECMS controllers within separated loops.
κ ∈ [1, 2] is a selected control parameter, and r0 is a threshold The SOC reference and the PEMFC control reference are
parameter. generated independently using the T-ECMS. To produce the
Fig. 5 shows the statistical relationship between the energy SOC reference, the energy gap rate of the decrease parameter
ratios and the corresponding initial EFs (denoted by s0 ) over is kept at a constant value of K0 , and the battery SOC is fed
tens of urban and highway cycles. The statistical relationship back within the local loop of the T-ECMS. Therefore, SOCref
between γg (0) and s0 over all possible cycles can be closely predicts the global optimal trajectory of the system. In contrast,
approximated by to produce the PEMFC control reference, K and SOC are fed
 back from the tracking controller within a loop that comprises
bγ
aγ + γg (0) , γg (0) > 1 both the T-ECMS and the tracking controller. Pfc,ref provides
s0 = (24)
0, γg (0) ≤ 1 information on how the PEMFC should be controlled at the
current step. The optimal reference signal generation procedure
where aγ > 0 and bγ < 0 are regression parameters. of the predictive controller is shown in Fig. 7. Block “z −1 ” in

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GENG et al.: ENERGY MANAGEMENT CONTROL OF FUEL CELL PHEVs CONSIDERING FUEL CELL LONGEVITY
Fig. 8. Schematic illustration of the tracking controller.
Fig. 7 is a unit delay block, which delays its input by a unit
sample period.
B. Tracking Controller Design
1) Control Logics: The controls from the T-ECMS cannot
be directly input to the PEMFC, as these commands would be
harmful to the lifetime of the PEMFC. However, the command
reference from the predictive controller can provide a useful
optimal reference signal, and therefore, the PEMFC should
track this reference and guarantee that constraints (e) and (f)
are satisfied.
The objective of the tracking controller is to track the
PEMFC control reference with respect to constraints (e) and
(f) on the health of the PEMFC. Then, the tracking controller
is designed in an optimization framework, which can be
summarized as
eo = min
o
|Pfc,k − Pfc,ref,k |
Pfc,k
subject to
⎧P
⎪ fc,min ≤ Pfc,k ≤ Pfc,max
⎨P
bat,min ≤ Pbat,k ≤ Pbat,max
⎪
⎩ ΔP fc,min ≤ ΔPfc,k ≤ ΔPfc,max
tfc,k ≥ tr
where objective (26) represents the absolute tracking error
between the practical PEMFC control and the optimal
reference control from the predictive controller. The inequality
constraints (27) arise due to the physical limitations of
local components [constraint (c)] and PEMFC longevity
considerations [constraint (e) and (f)].
When the PEMFC is switched on for less than tr before time
k but a zero control reference is given to the tracking controller
at time k, then according to (26) and (27), the PEMFC might
be set to idle. However, the idle state should be avoided since
the PEMFC efficiency at idle is zero. From the consideration of
efficiency, the PEMFC control is set to min(Pfc,max,sat,k , Pfc∗ ),
which leads to greater efficiency, and allows a wider feasible
range of control at k + 1 step than the idle state. Pfc,max,sat,k
is defined in Fig. 8. Pfc∗ represents the operating point of the
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503
PEMFC of peak efficiency. The resultant problem (26) and
(27) can be solved using the optimization control logic rules
shown in Fig. 8.
2) Adaptive Energy Gap Rate of Decrease Regulator: The
energy gap rate of the decrease parameter must be adaptively
tuned to guarantee that the SOC reference can be followed,
so that the global optimal trend will be achieved. Due to con-
straints (e) and (f), it is not possible for the tracking controller
to exactly track reference signal Pfc,ref , and hence, the practical
battery SOC may derivate from the SOC reference SOCref .
Therefore, the SOC information in the last step should be fed
back to guide the battery SOC change. If, in the last step, the
practical SOC is smaller than the SOC reference, K at the
current step must be tuned larger to make a larger SOC at
the current step, and vice versa. The aforementioned procedure
can be achieved through an adaptive energy gap rate of decrease
regulator described by
 α
SOCref,k−1
Kk = Kk−1 (28)
SOCk−1
where α ∈ + is introduced to accelerate the SOC tracking
procedure. Furthermore, during a practical application, exces-
sively large K will lead to no difference in the control perfor-
mance, and therefore, after (28), K is saturated before feedback
to the predictive controller.
The tracking controller consists of two main components,
i.e., the optimization control logic and the adaptive energy gap
rate of change regulator, with its flowchart shown in Fig. 8.
IV. S IMULATIONS AND D ISCUSSIONS
The effectiveness of the two-stage energy management
controller is validated in this section in the Matlab/Simulink
(26) software environment. Specifically, to highlight the control
performance of the TSC, the EVC in [29] is selected as a
baseline controller, with its resulting system trajectories and
control performance compared to the TSC in Section IV-A.
Section IV-B compares the control performance between the
TSC and the T-ECMS. In Section IV-C, the computational
(27)
issue of the TSC is discussed.
A. Control Performance and Trajectories
The EVC strategy, which is charge depleting and then sus-
taining, is used as a baseline controller in this section. The
control logic can be divided into a charge-depleting stage and
a charge-sustaining stage. In the charge-depleting stage, only
the battery is used to power the vehicle until the battery SOC
depletes to SOCmin . During the charge sustaining stage, the
PEMFC is turned on to sustain the battery SOC at SOCmin as
in the operation of an HEV.
For both the TSC and EVC, the battery SOC threshold para-
meters are selected as SOCmax = 0.9, SOCmin = 0.3, and the
initial battery SOC is assumed to be 0.9. The sample step size is
chosen as 1 s. To make an equivalent comparison between the
different controllers, the hydrogen consumption was corrected
504 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 61, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 9. Vehicle dc power demand, battery SOC trajectory, PEMFC power command, PEMFC command change rate, and PEMFC operation state over 4UDDS
using the EVC and the TSC.

Fig. 10. Vehicle dc power demand, battery SOC trajectory, PEMFC power command, PEMFC command change rate, and PEMFC operation state over 4HWFET
using the EVC and the TSC.

according to the respective final battery SOCs. More precisely,
if the final battery SOC was less than SOCmin , the battery
was charged to SOCmin by the PEMFC at the operating point
of peak efficiency. All hydrogen consumption reported in
Section IV is referred to as the corrected hydrogen
consumption.
The control parameters in the predictive controller are chosen
as K0 = 1000, κ = 2, and r0 = 90%, where K0 is the initial
estimate of the energy gap rate of decrease. The minimal time
interval that the PEMFC can change its operational state is
chosen as 1 min, and the maximal saturation parameter for K
is chosen as 106 . The change rate bounds of the control are
selected as ΔPfc,max = −ΔPfc,min = 4 kW.
In this paper, five driving cycles are designed to represent
the urban, highway, and mixed driving scenarios. They are
4UDDS, 4HWFET, 3UDDS+HWFET, 2UDDS+2HWFET,
and UDDS+3HWFET, which represent four consecutive rep-
etitions of the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS),
four consecutive repetitions of Highway Fuel Economy Cycle
(HWFET), three consecutive repetitions of UDDS followed by
one HWFET, two consecutive repetitions of UDDS followed
by two consecutive repetitions of HWFET, and one UDDS

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GENG et al.: ENERGY MANAGEMENT CONTROL OF FUEL CELL PHEVs CONSIDERING FUEL CELL LONGEVITY 505

Fig. 11. Adaptive tuning of the control parameters K and s.

TABLE III
C ONTROL P ERFORMANCE C OMPARISON B ETWEEN THE TSC AND THE EVC

followed by three consecutive repetitions of HWFET, respec-

tively. For simplicity, these cycles are abbreviated as 4U, 4H,
3U+H, 2U+2H, and U+3H, respectively.
Using the selected parameters, Figs. 9 and 10 compare
the battery SOC trajectory, the PEMFC power command, the
PEMFC command change rate, and the PEMFC operation state
variable over 4UDDS and 4HWFET between the EVC and the
TSC. From Figs. 9 and 10, four important conclusions can be
drawn over both urban and highway cycles.
1) The TSC is a charge-depleting strategy, which is a signif-
icant feature of optimal control for PHEVs.
2) Using the TSC, the PEMFC operating points are shifted
to the peak efficiency region (3–13 kW), which leads to
less hydrogen consumption.
3) The rate of change of the PEMFC commands is signifi-
cantly alleviated using the TSC compared with the EVC,
which means that the PEMFC longevity is expected to be
increased. Fig. 12. Comparisons between the TSC and the T-ECMS in terms of hydrogen
consumption, PEMFC operation state switch times, and average PEMFC
4) Using the TSC, the frequent switch of the PEMFC oper- control change rate over 4U, 4H, 3U+H, 2U+2H, and U+3H.
ation state is avoided.
The control trajectories in Figs. 9 and 10 show that, using the procedure of the control parameters in the TSC is shown in
TSC, the PEMFC provides a much smoother power profile with Fig. 11. K is adaptively tuned to track the optimal SOC signal,
smaller load fluctuations than the EVC, which is an operational and s dynamically changes according to the statistical rule
feature that can benefit PEMFC longevity. The adaptive tuning between the energy ratio and s.

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506
Fig. 13. SOC trajectories comparisons between the TSC and the T-ECMS over 4U, 4H, 3U+H, 2U+2H, and U+3H.
Over the five cycles simulated, the hydrogen consumption,
PEMFC switching time, and average rate of change of the
PEMFC control using the TSC and the EVC are compared
in Table III. It is shown that the TSC achieved substantially
less hydrogen consumption than the EVC over all the trips
(5.81%–9.00%). Furthermore, with the proposed approach, the
PEMFC operates with the switching times and average rate of
change of the control command of the PEMFC greatly reduced,
particularly for trips much farther than the all-electric range of
the PHEV [38].
B. Comparisons Between the TSC and the T-ECMS
In this section, the hydrogen consumption, state switching
times, and average control rate of change of the TSC and
T-ECMS are compared over the five cycles designed in
Section IV-A. The improvements of the TSC over T-ECMS in
these three aspects are plotted in Fig. 12.
Fig. 12 shows that, during the five driving cycles, the hy-
drogen consumption using the TSC approach is higher than
that of the T-ECMS, primarily because the PEMFC health
constraints are considered in the design of the TSC. This
approach makes the feasible region of the optimal control
problem much smaller. The TSC demonstrates overwhelming
advantages, compared to the T-ECMS in protection of the
PEMFC health, as both the operation state switch times and
the control rate of change of the PEMFC have been greatly
reduced. Therefore, the TSC approach makes a reasonable
tradeoff between the hydrogen consumption and the PEMFC
health protection.
The SOC trajectories using these two controls are compared
in Fig. 13 over five driving cycles. It is shown that using the
TSC the SOC trajectory can closely track the optimal SOC
trajectory achieved using the T-ECMS.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 61, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE IV
C OMPUTATIONAL C OST C OMPARISONS
B ETWEEN THE TSC AND THE EVC
C. Computational Study
To implement the predictive controller, at each step of
the controller implementation, two instantaneous optimization
problems must be solved in real time. In the case of the tracking
controller, only a few simple logic rules must be implemented,
which requires extremely small computation resources. There-
fore, the computational requirements of the proposed TSC are
on the same scale as the EVC. Both the TSC and the EVC
are implemented in a Matlab/Simulink environment under a
desktop platform (CPU speed: 2.53 GHz; memory: 3.00 GB),
with the average computation time in a single step shown
in Table IV. Although the TSC requires longer computation
time than the EVC, the computation time is much smaller
than the sample step size, and therefore, the methodology is
straightforward to implement in real time.
In our future work, energy management control will be
studied for biology systems to reduce the energy consumption
during the procedure of biology cell sorting [39] and biology
multicell transportation [40].
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a two-stage control has been developed to
minimize the hydrogen consumption for a PEMFC PHEV with
respect to vehicle operational limitations and PEMFC health
constraints. The main contribution of the proposed TSC lies
GENG et al.: ENERGY MANAGEMENT CONTROL OF FUEL CELL PHEVs CONSIDERING FUEL CELL LONGEVITY
in the fact that the hydrogen consumption and PEMFC health
protection are achieved in an integrated procedure without
requiring a large computational burden.
The TSC has been designed in a two-stage framework.
In the first stage, a predictive control has been designed to
predict the control reference and the SOC reference, without
consideration of the PEMFC health constraints. The control
reference represents optimal controls that the PEMFC should
track at each sample step, whereas the SOC reference gives
the global optimal trend of the system state trajectories. In
the second stage, a tracking controller has been devised to
generate the current practical control subject to the PEMFC
health constraints and update the energy gap rate of decrease
parameter for the predictive controller. Finally, through com-
parisons with T-ECMS and EVC, it is demonstrated that the
hydrogen consumption is minimized, and the durability of the
PEMFC is protected using the TSC.
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Bo Geng (S’11) received the B.S. degree from
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in
2008. He is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree with the Department of Mechanical and Bio-
medical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon, Hong Kong.
His research interests include energy management
control of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and opti-
mal charging control of plug-in electric vehicles.
Dong Sun (S’95–A’97–M’00–SM’08) received the
B.S. and Master’s degrees in mechatronics and
biomedical engineering from Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China, and the Ph.D. degree in robotics and
automation from the Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.
He was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Uni-
versity of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, and a
Research and Development Engineer with Ontario
industry. Since 2000, he has been with the City
University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong,
where he is currently a Professor with the Department of Mechanical and
Biomedical Engineering. His research interests include robotics manipulation,
multirobot systems, motion controls, and cell engineering.
Dr. Sun was an Associate Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON RO -
BOTICS from 2004 to 2008. He currently serves as a Technical Editor for the
IEEE/ASME T RANSACTIONS ON M ECHATRONICS.

James K. Mills (M’81) received the B.S. degree in

electrical engineering from the University of Mani-
toba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, in 1980 and the M.S.
degree in electrical engineering in 1982 and the
Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering, specializing
in control system design, in 1987, from the Univer-
sity of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
In 1988, he joined the Department of Mechanical
Engineering and Industrial Engineering, University
of Toronto. He has been an Invited Visiting Professor
with the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Ro-
botics, Bangalore, India; a Visiting Professor during sabbatical years with the
University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong; the Chinese Uni-
versity of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong; and City University, Kowloon, over
the past several years. He has published more than 380 journal and conference
proceeding papers and supervised more than 50 Master’s and Ph.D. students
and a number of postdoctoral fellows and research engineers in various research
areas. His research interests include robot control, control of multirobots,
control of flexible link robots, design of actuators, localization, development
of fixtureless assembly technology, design and control of high-speed machines,
development of neural network controllers, microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) 3-D assembly, MEMS robotic assembly task execution, microscale
biological task control, and automation.

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