Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect
Energy
Available
Available Procedia
online
online 00 (2018) 000–000
atatwww.sciencedirect.com
www.sciencedirect.com
Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

Energy
EnergyProcedia 158
Procedia 00(2019)
(2017)2744–2749
000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

10th
International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2018), 22-25 August 2018, Hong Kong,
th
10 International Conference on Applied Energy
China(ICAE2018), 22-25 August 2018, Hong Kong,
China
Energy Management for a Dual-motor Coupling Propulsion Electric
Energy Management
The 15th Internationalfor a Dual-motor
Symposium on District Coupling Heating Propulsion
and Cooling Electric
Bus based on Model Predictive Control
Bus based on Model Predictive Control
Assessing the feasibility
Cheng Lina,b , Mingjie Zhaoa,b,
of using the heat
*, Hong Pana,b
demand-outdoor
, Shuai Shaoa,b
temperature Chengfunction
Lin , Mingjie
a,b
for a long-term
Zhao *, Hong
a,b,
district
Pan , Shuai
a,b
heat demand
Shao a,b
forecast
National Engineering Laboratory for Electric Vehicles, School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Techonology,
a

National Engineering Laboratory for Electric Vehicles,

a
School
Beijing, of Mechanical
100081, China Engineering, Beijing Institute of Techonology,
a,b,c a a b c c
b
I. Andrić *, A. Pina , P. Ferrão , J. Fournier ., B. Lacarrière , O. Le Corre
Beijing,
Collaborative Innovation Center of Electric Vehicles 100081,Beijing
in Beijing, China Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China
b
Collaborative Innovation Center of Electric Vehicles in Beijing, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China
a
IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research - Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
b
Veolia Recherche & Innovation, 291 Avenue Dreyfous Daniel, 78520 Limay, France
c
Abstract Département Systèmes Énergétiques et Environnement - IMT Atlantique, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44300 Nantes, France
Abstract
Energy Management strategy is indispensable for the power allocation control and energy-saving performance of a dual-motor
Energy
couplingManagement strategy
propulsion electric busis (DMCEB).
indispensable for the power
Considering allocationand
the constraints control and energy-saving
instantaneous optimization, performance
a strategy of a dual-motor
based on model
Abstractpropulsion
coupling
predictive control is electric
proposed. busFirstly,
(DMCEB). Considering
the stationary the constraints
feature of the drivingand instantaneous
cycle trend is optimization,
analyzed and aastrategy based on model
novel acceleration sign
predictive control
prediction process is is proposed.
explored basedFirstly, onthe stationary feature
auto-regressive moving of the driving
average cycle trend
(ARMA) method.is analyzed
Secondly, andtwoa novel
specific acceleration sign
state transition
District heating
prediction
probability process
matricesnetworks
is are
explored arebased
commonly
established addressed
on auto-regressive
according inmoving
the literature
to the acceleration sign as
average one
(ARMA)
and of the most
method.
piecewise Markov effective
Secondly, solutions
two specific
chain model forstate
decreasing
is utilized the
transition
to predict
greenhouse
probability gas emissions
matrices are from
established the building
according sector.
to the These systems
acceleration require
sign and high investments
piecewise Markov which
chain
velocity sequences in the 5-second horizon followed by prior process. The fluctuations are significantly moderated under the effect are
modelreturned
is through
utilized to the heat
predict
sales. Due
velocity to theinchanged
sequences climate
the 5-second conditions and building renovation policies, heat demand in moderated
the future undercould thedecrease,
of acceleration sign prediction and horizon
the RMSE followed
can bebycontrolled
prior process.
within The fluctuations
around 1.4119 are significantly
km/h. At last, dynamic programming effect
(DP)
prolonging
of acceleration
is adopted the
as the investment
sign prediction
online return
rollingand period.
the RMSEpart
optimization canofbethe
controlled within around
model predictive 1.4119
control (MPC) km/h.
based At strategy
last, dynamic programming
and DP-based results(DP)
are
The
is
used main
adopted
as theasscope of thistorolling
the online
benchmark paper isoptimization
evaluate tothe
assess thepart
control feasibility
of the
effect. of
Themodel using theresults
heat demand
predictive
simulation control – outdoor
(MPC)
show that, thebased temperature
energy strategy
economy function
and forthe
DP-based
based on heat demand
results are
proposed
forecast.
used as the The district to
benchmark ofevaluate
Alvalade, the located
control in Lisbon
effect. The (Portugal),
simulation was used
results showasthat,
a case
the study. The
energy economydistrict is consisted
based on the of 665
proposed
strategy decreased by 21.4% comparing with the preliminary rule-based strategy and is only 6.8% worse than that based on DP.
buildings
strategy
With that vary
thedecreased
85.75 byin21.4%
kWh/100 both construction
km comparing
energy consumption period
with and typology.
the preliminary
performance Three
rule-based
and lowweather
strategy scenarios (low,
and isfrequency,
mode switch only 6.8% medium,
worse
the high)that
than
strategy isand threeon
based
reasonable district
DP.
and
renovation
With thefor
suitable 85.75scenarios bus. km energy consumption performance and low mode switch frequency, the strategy is reasonable were
kWh/100
electric were developed (shallow, intermediate, deep). To estimate the error, obtained heat demand values and
compared
suitable for with results
electric bus.from a dynamic heat demand model, previously developed and validated by the authors.
The results
Copyright © showed that when
2018 Elsevier Ltd. only weather
All rights change is considered, the margin of error could be acceptable for some applications
reserved.
© 2019
(the The©in
error
Copyright Authors.
annual Published
demand Ltd.wasby Elsevier
lower
rightsthan Ltd.20% for all weather scenarios considered). However, after introducing renovation
Selection and2018 Elsevier
peer-review under All
responsibilityreserved.
of the scientific committee of the 10th International Conference on Applied Energy
This is an
scenarios, open
the access
error article
value under
increased theupCC to BY-NC-ND
59.5% license
(depending (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
on the weather and renovation scenarios
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 10 International Conference on Applied Energy
th combination considered).
(ICAE2018).
Peer-review
The value under
(ICAE2018). of sloperesponsibility
coefficient of the scientific
increased committee
on average of ICAE2018
within the range –ofThe 10thupInternational
3.8% to 8% per Conference
decade, thatoncorresponds
Applied Energy.
to the
decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending
Keywords: Energy Management strategy; Dual-motor coupling propulsion bus; Markov chain; Model Predictive Control on the combination of weather and
renovation
Keywords: scenarios
Energy considered).
Management strategy;On the othercoupling
Dual-motor hand, function
propulsionintercept
bus; Markovincreased for 7.8-12.7%
chain; Model Predictive per decade (depending on the
Control
coupled scenarios). The values suggested could be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and
improve the accuracy of heat demand estimations.

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and
Cooling.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-18810412048.
* Corresponding
E-mail address:author. Tel.: +86-18810412048.
bitzmj@163.com
Keywords: Heat demand;
E-mail address: Forecast; Climate change
bitzmj@163.com
1876-6102 Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1876-6102 Copyright
Selection and © 2018
peer-review Elsevier
under Ltd. All of
responsibility rights reserved. committee of the 10th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2018).
the scientific
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 10th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2018).
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling.
1876-6102 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of ICAE2018 – The 10th International Conference on Applied Energy.
10.1016/j.egypro.2019.02.032
 Cheng Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 158 (2019) 2744–2749 2745
2 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000

1. Introduction

The traditional single motor integrated with automated mechanical transmission (AMT) system has low potential
in energy optimization and dynamic characteristics due to the only one propulsion unit. Therefore, more and more
dual-motor coupling propulsion (DMCP) systems have been researched to improve the comprehensive performance
of whole vehicle [1]. One of the most practical architectures utilizing two motors is coaxial coupling propulsion system
and energy management strategy becomes an essential factor for electric buses equipped with DMCP [2]. As this issue
can be equivalent to an optimization problem with proper constraints, many classical and intelligent optimization
algorithms have been adopted to solve it considering the specific application conditions [3, 4].
With considerable robust property and high calculating efficiency, rule-based control strategy has been widely used
to handle energy management problems. However, it can hardly lead to the optimal operation, then the global
optimization-based energy management strategy has been explored to improve the optimized results [5]. Dynamic
programming (DP) is one of the most effective algorithms which can obtain the global optimal results based on
Bellman principle of optimality. However, it needs the total information of driving cycles in advance that hinder its
online application potential [6]. Another kind of instantaneous optimization method such as model predictive control
(MPC) can find the finite local optimal control sequences with a length of future input [7, 8]. To take advantage of
MPC-based strategy, Markov chain model, which is good at dealing with time series prediction problems, is often
adopted as the prediction tool to estimate the possible required velocities in the next period of time. However, the
Markov chain is a kind of probability-based method, it may head for the wrong trend according to the presetting
statistic data, i.e. even if the vehicle is in an acceleration phase the Markov chain model may also forecast a lower
velocity variation due to the maximum probability. So a relevant velocity trend should be added as supplementary
information to assist the Markov process in leading to a precise result.
In this paper, a practical dual-motor coupling propulsion electric bus (DMCEB) and MPC-based energy
management strategy utilizing a novel piecewise Markov chain method are proposed. In section 2, the basic
information of DMCEB is provided. DP method is implemented to seek the optimal results in section 3. Section 4
introduces a novel piecewise Markov chain model based on acceleration sign prediction. Model predictive control
method is utilized in section 5 to handle the energy management problem in a typical driving cycle. The simulation
results are illustrated, compared and discussed in Section 6 before conclusions drawn in the final section.

2. Powertrain Configuration of DMCEB

The target bus studied in this paper is a dual-motor coaxial coupling propulsion electric bus of which the
architecture of the powertrain is shown in Fig. 1 (a). Here an auxiliary motor (AM) equipped with a two-speed
transmission and a traction motor (TM) connected directly to the main reducer can drive the vehicle in a torque-
coupling way. The efficiency models of main powertrain components are determined and established by experiments
in look-up table form. Rint model is set to describe the battery. The bus is a common 12-meter city bus with a gross
mass of 18,000 kg. The route discussed in the next is the Chinese typical city bus drive cycle (CCBC) and is illustrated
in Fig. 1 (b), with a driving distance of around 5.89 km and a duration of 1314s.
CAN
bus 70
VCU Electric cable BMS
60
Integrated
TCU Battery 50
MCU
40
Drive axle 30
20
AM TM
10
2-speed Dual-motor coupling
0
transmission
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
propulsion system
Time (s)

(a) (b)

Fig. 1. (a) Powertrain architecture of the dual-motor coupling propulsion bus; (b) The Chinese typical city bus drive cycle (CCBC)
2746 Cheng Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 158 (2019) 2744–2749
Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000 3

3. Energy Management based on Dynamic Programming

Dynamic programming is good at finding the optimal control law at each step to achieve the global energy-saving
results effectively. It firstly calculates the values of objective function based on the aforementioned models and
attaches all inputs to the state and control variables from the end of the sequence. Then the global optimization problem
can be transformed into a series of secondary issues backward from the terminal step and can be solved forward to
determine the optimal control trace. To simplify the control variables as possible, only torque of TM, torque split ratio
(TSR) and transmission shift command are selected. To avoid frequent gear shift phenomenon, a penalty term φ is
added. So the optimization target is to find the control law to minimize the total energy cost considering the frequency
of shift and the expressions are as follows:

 xk 1  f ( xk , uk )
 x  [ SOC , gear ]
 k k k

u
 k  [TSR k , shift k , TTM ]
(1)
 N 1 N 1
 J   L( xk , uk )  ( ECk (uk , k )    shiftk )
  k 0 k 0

To solve the above recursive Eq. (1) backward, the state ‫ݔ‬௞ and control variables ‫ݑ‬௞ should be discretized into
finite grids (Table 1) The shift command can only be upshift, sustain and downshift and the gear should be chosen
from 1 and 2, so their values are integer and fixed. Interpolation method is also adopted to evaluate the values if ‫ݔ‬௞ାଵ
does not locate on the grids. To accelerate the computational process, an approximately grid resolution is determined.

Table 1. The state and control parameters of DP algorithm

No. State & Control Variables Range Resolution Data type
1 State of charge (SOC) 0-100% 1% Continuous
2 Gear of the transmission (gear) {1, 2} െെ Discrete
3 Torque of Traction Motor (TTM) 0-2100Nm 10Nm Continuous
4 Shift command of transmission (shift) {-1, 0, 1} െെ Discrete
5 Torque split ratio (TSR) 0-1 0.01 Continuous

4. Driving cycle Prediction based on Piecewise Markov chain

The idea of Markov chain model is mainly based on a hypothesis indicating that each state in a stochastic time
series process will only related to that of the last n states, which is so called n order Markov process. That means the
following state will be influenced and determined by the past n data. Taking both the driving cycle characteristics and
calculation burden into consideration, first order Markov process is suitable to be employed to forecast the velocity
changes in the short future. To decrease the impact of false velocity trend estimation, the variation sequences of
acceleration signs will be judged in advance. Thus the acceleration and braking processes can be separated and two
independent state transition probability matrices can be determined to predict the next velocity.

4.1. Acceleration sign prediction based on ARMA method

There are plenty of methods to deal with the time series prediction problems. The choice criterion mainly depends
on the stationary property of the data sequence. It is obvious that the velocity series is non-stationary time series which
means its unconditional joint probability distribution changes a lot when shifted in time. However, the acceleration
series can be regarded as a trend stationary time series as its mean value is around zero. So auto-regressive moving
average (ARMA) method can be utilized to forecast the acceleration variation. Besides, as we do not care the accurate
value but only focus on the sign of acceleration, a lower order ARMA model can be accepted. Here the order of AR
 Cheng Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 158 (2019) 2744–2749 2747
4 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000

process and MA process are both set to fifth and the prediction results can be seen in Fig. 2. Though the value of
forecast acceleration is not precise the trend is similar to the real value. Hence the sign prediction is quite suitable and
can be set as supplementary information to assist the velocity prediction in the Markov process.

Fig. 2. (a) The acceleration value prediction in future 5s of each step; (b) the acceleration sign prediction in future 5s of
each step

4.2. Velocity prediction based on piecewise Markov model

(a) (b)

Fig. 3. (a) The state transition probability matrix of accelerating process; (b) the state transition probability matrix of braking process

The key factor of Markov chain method is the state transition probability matrix and its judging criteria when
deducing the next velocity is the specific value with the highest probability. With the help of acceleration sign, the
traditional matrix can be divided into two parts to improve the total prediction accuracy as shown in Fig. 3. Since the
Markov here is within first order, the next predictive velocity can be regarded as a new step value and after repeating
the Markov process the required prediction series can be obtained. As illustrated in Fig. 4, the results based on
conventional Markov chain method are not satisfied and its total RMSE is about 2.74km/h, while that based on
piecewise Markov chain method, with a small total RMSE as only 1.4119 km/h, seems quite smooth and fit the real
velocity well. Here the proposed method can improve the accuracy by 48.5%.
2748 Cheng Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 158 (2019) 2744–2749
Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000 5

Fig. 4. (a) Velocity prediction based on traditional Markov; (b) prediction RMSE based on traditional Markov; (c) velocity
prediction based on piecewise Markov; (d) prediction RMSE based on piecewise Markov

5. Energy Management strategy based on Model predictive Control

As one of the most efficient advanced control algorithms, Model predictive Control (MPC) mainly consists of three
parts: prediction model, rolling optimization and feedback recalibration. In a certain step, the current states are
regarded as the initial values in the optimization process. The prediction part can provide the necessary information
in a definite time series and a determined optimization method, like DP, can find the optimal results and control
sequence within the forecasting steps considering the rational constraints. Then only the first control variable will act
on the vehicle and transit the state variables into next step. By repeating these procedures, we can get the local optimal
control law gradually. The basic logic flow of such energy management strategy can be summarized as shown in Fig.
5. Here the constraints and references such as gear shift frequency, SOC change, disturbance from environment etc.
can be considered and adjusted online. Moreover, under the MPC control logic, some other conventional offline global
optimization methods can be used to solve the transformed local optimization problem.

Acceleration
Past Driving Cycle Real Velocity Record & Update
Prediction
Information
based on ARMA
Estimated SOC, Gear, etc.
Optimization of Observer
Y Transition Matrix Future Conditions
Acc>0? based on Dynamic
of Acc Process Controlled
Programming Vehicle System Outputs
N Velocity
Transition Matrix Forecast
Inputs
of Brk Process
Reference Driver

Fig. 5. The basic logic flow of the energy management strategy based on MPC

6. Simulation Results and Comparison

Fig. 6 shows the SOC trace variation results of the strategies based on DP algorithm and the aforementioned MPC
method in the same cycle. The SOC is initialized as 90.0% and the variations of SOC are both gradually decreasing
with obvious fluctuations. The DMCEB consumed only 80.24kWh electricity in CCBC cycle per 100km under the
DP-based strategy whereas 85.75kWh/100km is necessary that under the MPC-based strategy, namely the MPC
 Cheng Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 158 (2019) 2744–2749 2749
6 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000

energy management is only 6.8% worse than that based on DP. However, as shown in Table 2, the MPC-based strategy
can significantly improve the energy-saving potential comparing with the preliminary rule-based strategy.

Table 2. Energy consumption of strategies based on determine rules, DP and MPC

Item Preliminary rule-based strategy DP-based strategy MPC-based strategy
Cost in Acceleration process (kWh/100km) 139.3971 110.4983 116.0175
Cost in total process (kWh/100km) 109.1271 80.2354 85.7546
Energy-saving potential 0 26.47% 21.42%
0.9
DP-based SOC
0.895 MPC-based SOC

0.89

0.885

0.88

0.875

0.87
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
Time (s)

Fig. 6. The SOC traces of strategies based on DP and MPC methods

7. Conclusions

A novel piecewise Markov-based velocity prediction method adopting acceleration sign is proposed which can
decrease the forecasting RMSE by 48.5%. Energy management strategies based on DP and MPC are conducted
respectively. The results of the latter is only 6.8% worse than that of the former, and can reduce the energy
consumption by 21.42% comparing with a preliminary rule-based strategy. The proposed strategy is quite suitable for
electric city buses of which the route is steady and easy to be predicted accurately.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Technology Research and Development Program of China
(2017YFB0103801). Any opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not represent those
of the sponsors.

References

[1] Hu M, Chen S, Zeng J. Control Strategy for the Mode Switch of a Novel Dual-Motor Coupling Powertrain[J]. IEEE Transactions on
Vehicular Technology, 2018,67(3):2001-2013.
[2] Zhao M, Shi J, Lin C, et al. Application-Oriented Optimal Shift Schedule Extraction for a Dual-Motor Electric Bus with Automated Manual
Transmission[J]. Energies, 2018,11(2):325.
[3] M. Sabri M F, Danapalasingam K A, Rahmat M F. A review on hybrid electric vehicles architecture and energy management strategies[J].
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016,53:1433-1442.
[4] Serrao L, Onori S, Rizzoni G. A Comparative Analysis of Energy Management Strategies for Hybrid Electric Vehicles[J]. Journal of
Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, 2011,133(3):31012.
[5] H. B, S. A, Y. C. A rule-based energy management strategy for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV): 2009 American Control Conference,
2009[C].2009 10-12 June 2009.
[6] Torres J L, Gonzalez R, Gimenez A, et al. Energy management strategy for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A comparative study[J]. Applied
Energy, 2014,113:816-824.
[7] S. J M, H. K F, D. S C, et al. A Stochastic Optimal Control Approach for Power Management in Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles[J]. IEEE
Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2011,19(3):545-555.
[8] S. D C, D. B, A. B, et al. Stochastic MPC With Learning for Driver-Predictive Vehicle Control and its Application to HEV Energy
Management[J]. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2014,22(3):1018-1031.