846
3, MAY 2005
Performance Comparison of a Fuel Cell-Battery
Hybrid Powertrain and a Fuel Cell-Ultracapacitor
Hybrid Powertrain
Wenzhong Gao, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper studies two hybrid power systems for ve-
hicle applications: a fuel cell-battery hybrid powertrain and a fuel
cell-ultracapacitor hybrid powertrain. First, the characteristics of
fuel cell, battery, and ultracapacitor as power sources are summa-
rized. Then the configurations of the two types of hybrid fuel cell
powertrains are presented. Finally, example hybrid powertrains
are designed and simulated using ADVISOR. The simulation re-
sults indicate that ultracapacitors can more effectively assist the
fuel cell to meet the vehicle power demand and help achieve a better
performance and a higher fuel economy.
Index Terms—Energy source, hybrid electric vehicles, ultraca-
pacitor, vehicle simulation.
I. INTRODUCTION
F UEL cells are currently under research as possible alterna-
tive power sources to drive new vehicles. Some fuel cell
prototype vehicles have been built for the purpose of proof-of-
concept. The main obstacles for the commercialization of fuel
cell vehicles are, among other things, high cost and poor tran-
sient performance. Further, current fuel cell system does not
allow bidirectional energy flow, thus, prohibiting braking energy
regeneration. Therefore, some kind of hybridization of fuel cells
with other energy storage devices such as batteries and ultraca-
pacitors will remain advantageous for a long period of time. For
example, the Toyota FCHV fuel cell vehicle uses a nickel-metal
hydride battery pack as the secondary energy source, and Honda
FCX fuel cell vehicle uses ultracapacitors as energy buffer to
achieve powerful, responsive driving [1], [2]. In hybrid power-
trains, the fuel cell system provides the base power for constant
speed driving while the other energy storage devices provide ad-
ditional peak power during acceleration and high load operation
and recover braking energy by regeneration. Hence, the fuel cell
power rating and cost will be reduced; the powertrain transient
performance will be improved; and energy efficiency will be in-
creased.
There have been some studies and experiments involving hy-
brid fuel cell vehicles [1], [3], [4]. In [1], the requirements on
energy storage devices in a fuel cell vehicle are analyzed. A mid
size SUV and a midsize car are designed and simulated using
ADVISOR in order to help the FreedomCar technical teams
Manuscript received September 28, 2004; revised December 28, 2004 and
January 30, 2005. The review of this paper was coordinated by Prof. A. Emadi.
The author is with the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Mis-
sissippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762 USA (e-mail:
wgao@cavs.msstate.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVT.2005.847229
0018-9545/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO.
properly size the energy storage devices on board fuel cell ve-
hicles. It is concluded that the powertrain cost and volume can
be greatly reduced over the pure fuel cell vehicle due to fuel
cell downsizing via hybridization. In [3], a fuel cell system with
nominal power of 48 kW is hybridized with supercapacitors
with a storage capacity of 360 Wh. The hybrid system is im-
plemented on a road vehicle and tested. The test results demon-
strate that good transient performance and impressive energy
efficiency are achieved. In [4], optimization tools are linked to
ADVISOR for the optimal design of a battery fuel cell SUV. In
particular, ratings of fuel cell and battery and energy manage-
ment strategy are optimized to maximize fuel economy, while
meeting the prespecified vehicle performance constraints. For
a U.S. city/highway composite test procedure, the optimizer
chose a 66-kW fuel cell system and a 28-module battery pack
with a large amper-hour capacity of 50 Ah per module.
This paper will study and systematically compare the perfor-
mance and energy efficiency of two different hybrid fuel cell
power systems for vehicle applications: a fuel cell-battery hy-
brid powertrain and a fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid powertrain.
First, the characteristics of fuel cell, battery, and ultracapacitor
as power sources are summarized. Then the configurations of
the two types of fuel cell hybrid powertrains are presented. Fi-
nally, four hybrid powertrains are designed and simulated using
ADVISOR. The fuel economy, performance, peak power capa-
bility, weight, and cost of the designed hybrid systems will be
compared. The simulation results will be analyzed and conclu-
sions be drawn.
II. CHARACTERISTICS OF FUEL CELL, BATTERY, AND
ULTRACAPACITOR AS POWER SOURCES
Fuel cell may be considered as an “open” battery in that the
energy capacity is not limited by the reductant and oxidant
contained within a cell. Instead, the energy generating capacity
is determined by the amount of on-board hydrogen fuel. As
a power source, fuel cell can be three times more efficient
(typical efficiency value of 60%) than internal combustion
engines (typical efficiency value of 20%) [2] because fuel cell
is not subject to the “Carnot cycle” efficiency limit [5]. Except
for water as the only byproduct, there is no CO and other
harmful emissions. Thus, fuel cell is a clean energy source.
However, current fuel cell system still has low power density
(10 to 100 times lower) compared to combustion engines.
The short-term goal of power density for fuel cell system is
0.5 kW/L [1] while current internal combustion engine can
GAO et al.: FUEL CELL-BATTERY HYBRID POWERTRAIN
Fig. 1. (a) Dynamic fuel cell model. (b) Dynamic battery model. (c)
Fifth-order ultracapacitor model.
reach up to 50 kW/L. The fuel cell vehicle drive range is still
much shorter than conventional vehicles and is limited by the
hydrogen storage energy density and cost. In addition, fuel cell
system has the disadvantages of slow start-up and slow power
response. Hence, a pure fuel cell vehicle has bad acceleration
performance. Further, fuel cell system cannot make use of any
braking energy for improving fuel economy and driving range
because of its inability for energy regeneration. Another char-
acteristics of fuel cell system is that its efficiency peaks near
25% of the rated power, with relatively lower efficiency at low
and high output power. Thus, a vehicle control strategy should
avoid fuel cell system’s low efficiency operating regions.
The relationship between cell current and voltage is mod-
eled as the polarization curve and is based on fuel cell’s steady
state performance. In particular, the fuel cell output voltage is
modeled as the thermodynamic potential subtracted by three
types of overvoltages: activation overvoltages, ohmic overvolt-
ages, and concentration overvoltages. However, in practical ap-
plication such as powertrains of land-based vehicles, the output
power from the fuel cell system undergoes large variations es-
pecially during acceleration and deceleration. During such tran-
sient operation periods, due to the existence of the double layer
capacitance at the interface between the electrodes and the elec-
trolyte, the reactant gas manifold filling dynamics, cell surface
dynamics, and other effects, the fuel cell stack system’s per-
formance cannot be adequately represented by a steady-state
model. Hence, a dynamic fuel cell model is needed to provide
more accurate predictions of fuel cell system performance for
the dynamic simulation and analysis of fuel cell power system.
Such a model is illustrated in Fig. 1(a).
Generally speaking, a battery has the characteristics of high
energy density and relatively low power density (but still 3 to 5
times higher than the power density of a fuel cell system). The
internal resistance is the major factor for the limited discharging
and charging current capability. The internal equivalent series
resistance has different values under charging and discharging
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847
Fig. 2. Configurations of fuel cell hybrid powertrains.
operating conditions. The values are also dependent on the fre-
quency of the discharging current [6]. For lithium-ion battery,
the internal resistance could increase by 50% from 1000 to 100
Hz. The amper-hour capacity is affected by the discharging cur-
rent rate and is modeled by the Peukert’s equation [7]. The
charging and discharging efficiency are nonlinear functions of
current and state of charge (SOC).
The battery can be modeled as an equivalent circuit such as
an internal resistance model or a Resistance Capacitance (RC)
model in ADVISOR [8]. In an internal resistance model, a bat-
tery is modeled as a voltage source and an internal resistor. Both
the voltage source and the internal resistor are functions of the
SOC and temperature, which are implemented as look-up ta-
bles. In a Resistance Capacitance model, a battery is represented
as a parallel combination of two RC branches. The very large
capacitor models the battery’s charge capacity while the small
capacitor models the time constant due to surface effects that
limits the current. The model is implemented as a S-function in
MATLAB/Simulink.
On the other hand, ultracapacitor has the characteristics of
high-power density and relatively low energy density. Its equiv-
alent internal resistance is decades lower than that of a battery,
thus allowing decades of higher discharging/charging current.
The overall efficiency is higher than that of battery. Its capac-
itance is huge compared to ordinary electrolyte capacitor, al-
lowing enough energy storage for acceleration power require-
ment [9], [10]. Note that internal resistance and capacitance are
highly dependent on the frequency because of the porous nature
of the electrodes. One big advantage of ultracapacitor is that its
SOC is allowed to vary more widely and thus has longer life
cycles. Its capability to provide high power bursts is ideal for
hybrid vehicle applications. An ultracapacitor can also be mod-
eled as an internal resistance model or RC model in ADVISOR
in the same way for a battery. The difference is that the internal
resistance for charging is typically the same as for discharging.
To predict the behavior of battery/ultracapacitor voltage
and current during transient operation such as acceleration
and deceleration, physics-based dynamic models are needed
848
Fig. 3. Vehicle required electric power under US 06 driving cycle for Case 1.
TABLE I
ASSUMED PARAMETERS FOR THE VEHICLE
to account for the time constants due to the electrochemical
reactions in batteries or double-layer effects in ultracapacitor.
Such dynamic models are illustrated in Fig. 1(b) and (c), [11].
III. CONFIGURATIONS OF FUEL CELL HYBRID POWERTRAINS
Because fuel cell and battery/ultracapacitor have advantages
and disadvantages of their own, it should be beneficial to have
a hybrid powertrain [1], [12], in which fuel cell system supplies
the base power while battery/ultracapacitor supplies peak power
for fast acceleration and captures the braking energy for regen-
eration. The hybridization degree is defined as
(1)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 3, MAY 2005
TABLE II
ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM ASSUMPTIONS
TABLE III
ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM COMPARISON
TABLE IV
FUEL ECONOMY (mpg, GASOLINE EQUIVALENT)
TABLE V
SIMULATED VEHICLE PERFORMANCE
where is the power of the energy storage device and is
the fuel cell power. The HD of 0 corresponds to a pure fuel cell
vehicle, and a HD of 1 corresponds to a pure electric vehicle.
In a hybrid powertrain, a control strategy is always necessary to
manage the power flow considering the largely different char-
acteristics of each component. The two types of hybrid fuel cell
powertrains to be studied are illustrated in Fig. 2(a) and (b).
To exploit the advantages of both the battery and ultraca-
pacitor, namely, high-power density of the ultracapacitor and
high-energy density of the battery, hybrid power sources in-
volving the two have been investigated [6], [11], [13], [16], [17].
It can be expected that a fuel cell hybrid powertrain with both
battery and ultracapacitor can result in superb system perfor-
mance and energy efficiency. Such a hybrid powertrain is illus-
trated in Fig. 2(c).
GAO et al.: FUEL CELL-BATTERY HYBRID POWERTRAIN 849

Fig. 4. Case 1-UDDS. (a) Vehicle speed, fuel cell output power, and battery SOC. (b) Battery current, energy, and recup.

IV. ADVISOR SIMULATION RESULTS In the hybrid powertrain, fuel cell supplies the base power,
, to meet the vehicle power requirement for cruising and/or
To compare the fuel economy and performance of the two driving on road with grade [12], [14]
types of fuel cell hybrid powertrains, four fuel cell hybrid vehi-
cles are designed in ADVISOR. The first design case is the de-
fault fuel cell vehicle with battery in ADVISOR and is used as (2)
a baseline vehicle (input file name: FUEL_CELL_defaults_in).
The hypothetical small car is roughly based on a 1994 Saturn where is the vehicle total mass (assumed to be 1380 kg); is
SL1 vehicle with the main data listed in Table I. The fuel cell the road grade; is the motor average efficiency (assumed to
is the type of Ambient Pressure Hydrogen Fuel Cell System. be 0.90). Then, from calculation, is 13.1 kW under cruising
1-speed gearbox is used for the transmission. The powertrain speed of 60 mph (96 km/h) on flat road; is 42.1 kW under
controller uses the hybrid with thermostat control strategy as maximum speed of 95 mph (152 km/h) on flat road; is 50.0
defined in ADVISOR [8]. Energy storage and electric motor are kW if maximum grade at 55 mph is 10%. This determines the
described in more detail below. size of the fuel cell for steady driving.
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850 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 3, MAY 2005

Fig. 5. Case 2-UDDS. (a) Vehicle speed, fuel cell output power, ultracap SOC. (b) Ultracap current, energy, and recup.

The maximum total electric power required for vehicle accel-
eration from 0 to 60 mph in 11 s is [14], [15]
(3)
where is the mass factor (assumed to be 1.035). The maximum
is computed to be 124.8 kW.
Based on the above calculation, the net peak power of the
fuel cell system is designed to be 50 kW and the battery size
to be at least 75 kW (including electrical accessory load). A
Westinghouse 75-kW (continuous) ac induction motor/inverter
with a peak efficiency of 0.92 is used in the powertrain.
In summary, the four design cases are as follows.
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Case 1 (Baseline): 25 modules of lead acid (Hawker Genesis
12 V 26 Ah 10 EP VRLA) batteries are used; battery peak power
is 86.35 kW; total vehicle mass is 1380 kg.
Case 2: 85 cells of Maxwell ultracapacitors are used; ultra-
capacitor peak power is 86.0 kW; total vehicle mass is 1140 kg
(the same hybridization degree as Case 1).
Case 3: 170 cells of ultracapacitors are used (twice of Case
2); ultracapacitor peak power is 172.0 kW; total vehicle mass is
1174 kg.
Case 4: 50 modules of lead acid battery are used (twice of
Case 1); battery peak power is 172.8 kW; total vehicle mass is
1655 kg.
As a double check, the total required electric power under US
06 driving cycle for Case 1 is given in Fig. 3. It is noted that the
GAO et al.: FUEL CELL-BATTERY HYBRID POWERTRAIN 851

Fig. 6. Case 3-UDDS. (a) Vehicle speed, fuel cell output power, ultracap SOC. (b) Ultracap current, energy, and recup.

maximum total power required is about 105 kW at time near 300
s. This is close to (but smaller than) the above maximum
of 124.4 kW.
The assumptions for the battery and ultracapacitor are pro-
vided in Table II, [1], [8]. The peak power, energy storage ca-
pacity, weight, and cost of the two types of fuel cell hybrid pow-
ertrains are compared in Table III.
Note that the designed fuel cell vehicles have large power
rating energy storage devices because the fuel cell vehicle is a
series hybrid [4]. Thus, fuel cell system can be considered as
Auxiliary Power Unit, which is controlled to run at its optimum
efficiency region.
In the simulation studies, energy management strategies(series
thermostat control strategy [8]) remain the same in all cases. The
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highest desired state of charge (SOC) is 0.8; the lowest desired
SOC is 0.4. Initial SOC for the battery and ultracapacitor is the
same (0.7) for all cases. The simulations are run under three dif-
ferent driving schedules: Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule
(UDDS), Highway Fuel Economy Test (HWFET), and US06 (ag-
gressive driving cycle). The fuel economy in terms of miles per
gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGGE, mpgge) for the four cases
is compared in Table IV. The MPGGE is calculated based on the
lower heating value of gasoline (42.6 kJ/g), density of gasoline
(749 g/L), and total energy consumption from the energy storage
system. The detailed definition is given in [8].
From the numbers, Case 2 with ultracapacitor has higher fuel
economy than Case 1. Increasing the modules of ultracapacitor
from Case 2 to Case 3 does not increase fuel economy (the dif-
852 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 3, MAY 2005

Fig. 7. Parametric study for fuel cell-battery hybrid. (a) Fuel economy (mpgge). (b) Acceleration time 0 to 60 mph.

ference is small). Increasing the modules of batteries from Case
1 to Case 4 decreases fuel economy.
The simulated vehicle performance is listed in Table V. Specif-
ically, the performance indices include the acceleration times for
the vehicle to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph, from 40 to 60 mph, and
from 0 to 85 mph; the maximum achievable speed; and the max-
imumsustainablegradeat55mph.ThelastrowalsoliststhePNGV
performance constraints for midsize car [1]. From the numbers,
Case 1 has better performance than case 2. Increasing the modules
of ultracapacitor from Case 2 to Case 3 greatly improves the ve-
hicleperformance.Asaresult,fuelcell-ultracapcitorhybrid(Case
3) has much better performance than the baseline fuel cell-battery
hybrid (Case 1). Increasing the modules of batteries from Case 1
to Case 4 also improves the vehicle performance.
From the simulation results in Tables IV and V, with the
same hybridization degree (0.63), ultracapacitor fuel cell hy-
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brid vehicle’s fuel economy is higher by about 30% than its
battery counterpart, but the performance is worse. If more ul-
tracapacitors are used with a hybridization degree of 0.78, the
vehicle performance can be improved tremendously while the
fuel economy is maintained roughly at the same high level.
To better illustrate the difference and facilitate the compar-
ison and analysis, the plots of vehicle speed, fuel cell output
power, battery/ultracapacitor state of charge, current, energy
change, and energy recuperation under UDDS cycles are given
in Figs. 4 to 6. The energy change in battery/ultracapacitor
is obtained by integration of the output power of the energy
storage device. The energy recuperation trace is obtained by
integration of the negative output power of the energy storage
device. This energy is the combination of the regenerated
braking energy and the charging energy obtained from the fuel
cell.
GAO et al.: FUEL CELL-BATTERY HYBRID POWERTRAIN
From the plots, the fuel cell is turned off frequently under
UDDS, with the required vehicle power provided by the battery
or ultracapacitor. This can help increase overall fuel cell effi-
ciency when the vehicle power requirement is low or negative.
When the fuel cell power is on, the battery or the ultracapacitor
may operate in two different states: discharging to provide ad-
ditional power to meet the vehicle demand or charging to save
the excess energy produced by the fuel cell.
The total seconds that fuel cells are turned on for the three cases
are listed in Table VI together with the percentages of the turn-on
times with respect to the total time 5476 s (for the 4 UDDS cycles).
Comparing Case 1 and Case 2 [Figs. 4(a) and 5(a)], the fuel cell
runs more frequently for battery hybrid (Case 1), indicating that
battery does not assist the fuel cell as effectively as ultracapacitor
although both have the same peak power capability. This is why
the fuel economy is better for ultracapacitor hybrid (Case 2). Also
notice that the SOC of the ultracapacitor for Case 2 varies more
widely (from 0.4 to 0.8) while the SOC of the battery for Case
1 is kept almost constant at 0.8. For both Case 1 and Case 2, the
energy recuperation by the battery and that by the ultracapacitor
are almost the same. However, the ultracapacitor used this energy
to assist the fuel cell while the battery had a net energy gain at the
end of the four cycles thus resulting in the increased SOC. With
more modules of ultracapacitor added in Case 3, the the energy
recuperation by the ultracapacitors is now about 10% more than
in Case 2. But there is a bigger net energy gain at the end of the
four cycles, thus resulting in the increased SOC. This explains
why the added ultracapacitor does not help the fuel economy for
the ultracapacitor hybrid.
Under the same hybridization degree, Case 1 fuel cell-battery
hybrid has better performance than Case 2 fuel cell-ultracapac-
itor hybrid. This is because there is much more stored energy in
battery that can meet the vehicle power (and energy) requirement
for acceleration. In other words, the small energy capacity of 210
Wh of the ultracapacitor limited the sustainable acceleration rate,
especially for acceleration period above speed 60 mph when the
power requirement to overcome the rolling resistance and aero-
dynamic drag is already high. But with added modules of ultraca-
pacitor, the Case 3 ultracapacitor hybrid has more power and thus
has better performance as it is shown in Table V.
When running the more aggressive US 06 driving cycles,
Case 2 fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid missed the required trace
greater than 2 mph for 1.375% time of the US 06 cycles. On the
contrary, the Case 3 fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid did not miss
any trace. This is consistent with the fact that the added ultraca-
pacitors can improve the vehicle dynamic performance.
For Case 4 with increased batteries, although the battery can
store a large amount of energy, 15.62 kWh, but since the current
is limited, thus the power is still limited. This explains Case 4
performance is not as good as Case 3 performance. It also indi-
cates that very large energy storage capability is not important
for performance.
In all, Case 3 is the best design for both fuel economy and
performance. However, a much higher initial investment on ul-
tracapacitor ($2580) is required. But assuming better NiMH bat-
tery is used with a cost of $40/kW, Case 1 will require a cost of
$3456, which is greater than Case 3.
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853
TABLE VI
FUEL CELL TURN-ON TIMES
TABLE VII
SIMULATED VEHICLE PERFORMANCE FOR FUEL
CELL-BATTERY-ULTRACAPACITOR COMBINATION
Parametric studies for the two types of fuel cell hybrids are
performed in ADVISOR. The peak power of the battery/ultra-
capacitor is varied from 50 to 300 kW in an increment of 50
kW. This translates to six levels of hybridization degree: 50%,
66.7%, 75%, 80%, 83.3%, 85.7%. The fuel economy under
UDDS, HWFET, and US06 are illustrated in Figs. 7(a) and 8(a)
for fuel cell-battery hybrid and fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid,
respectively. Also, the 0 to 60 mph acceleration times are
illustrated in Figs. 7(b) and 8(b). For fuel economy, the general
trend for the two types of hybrid powertrains is that increasing
hybridization degree will decrease fuel economy. But it should
be noted that the fuel economy decreases at a much less extent
for fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid. For example, when the en-
ergy storage’s peak power increases from 50 to 200 kW under
UDDS, the MPGGE drops from 61 to 49 (20% reduction) for
the fuel cell-battery hybrid while it drops from 77 to 73 (5%
reduction) for the fuel cell-ultracapacitor.
For performance in terms of 0 to 60 mph acceleration
times, increasing hybridization degree will improve vehicle
performance until the peak power reaches 200 kW (80% hy-
bridization degree). But further increasing hybridization degree
will slightly degrade the performance for fuel cell-battery hy-
brid while the fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid’s performance will
remain unchanged thereafter. The reason behind this difference
should be the greatly increased mass of the battery due to the
low specific power as the hybridization degree is raised.
V. CONCLUSION, PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION, AND
DISCUSSION
Overall, fuel cell-ultracapacitor hybrid is better since ultra-
capacitor can more effectively assist fuel cell to meet transient
power demand. If more ultracapacitors are added, the perfor-
mance is improved while the fuel economy remains high. Al-
though battery modules can also be increased for a fuel cell-bat-
tery hybrid, only the performance can be improved while the
fuel economy will be decreased as shown by Case 4. The battery
has higher specific energy than ultracapacitor. But in a charge-
sustaining hybrid powertrain, this is not necessarily an advan-
tage since the range is determined by the fuel tank volume. As
demonstrated in this paper, higher specific power characteristics
854 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 3, MAY 2005

Fig. 8. Parametric study for fuel cell-ultracap hybrid. (a) Fuel economy (mpgge). (b) Acceleration time 0 to 60 mph.

of ultracapacitor is a big advantage for hybrid fuel cell pow-
ertrain, which can enhance both the fuel economy and vehicle
acceleration performance. In addition, the characteristics of al-
lowing a wide variation of SOC also enables the ultracapacitor
to more effectively assist the fuel cell to meet the vehicle power
demand and to help achieve a better performance and a higher
fuel economy.
However, a fuel cell hybrid vehicle with ultracapacitors as
the only energy storage will have deficiency or even malfunc-
tion during the vehicle start-up. For example, the current fuel
cell reformer start-up requires a time duration of about 10 min
(600 s). From ADVISOR simulation, the vehicle requires about
2000 kJ of energy for the first 600 s of a UDDS cycle. But for
the design Case 2 the maximum possible energy stored in the ul-
tracapacitor has only about 0.21 kWh or 756 kJ (for design case
3, 1512 kJ). The realistic number should be even smaller than
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this for current ultracapacitor technology. So, the energy stored
in the ultracapacitor cannot sustain vehicle load during the fuel
cell start-up time. Therefore, a more practical solution will be a
fuel cell-battery-ultracapcitor combination, as discussed in [13],
[15], [16]. To address this real possibility, a design case study
has been conducted. The new design case has 25 (275 kg) mod-
ules of lead acid batteries and 80 (33 kg) cells of ultracapac-
itors corresponding to a cost of $2084 for the combined en-
ergy storage unit. This combined energy storage unit is mod-
eled and implemented in a similar way as that presented in [13].
A simple power distribution method is taken in which 70% of
charging or discharging power is assigned to the batteries while
30% assigned to the ultracapacitors. From the simulation results
in Table VII, this design case meets the requirements of all the
acceleration times and maximum speed as set by PNGV while
case 3 failed the 0 to 85 mph time requirement. Comparing to
GAO et al.: FUEL CELL-BATTERY HYBRID POWERTRAIN
case 1 and case 2, the new design has better overall dynamic
performance. Comparing to case 4, this new design has better
fuel economy and about the same dynamic performance. If a
more advanced dc/dc converter is implemented with cleverer
power management scheme to fully utilize the advantages of
both the battery and the ultracapacitor, the outcome is expected
to be greatly improved [13]. In addition, this design has enough
batteries to avoid the vehicle start-up problem associated with a
pure ultracapacitor design.
Future work will include simulation of the fuel cell hybrid
powertrains using RC Model for batteries and ultracapacitors.
Further, dynamic models of fuel cell, battery, and ultracapacitor
will be implemented in ADVISOR and the transient behavior
and dynamic interactions among the different power sources
will be simulated and analyzed. Special attention will be paid
to ensure a good simulation accuracy.
It is noted that the design of fuel cell hybrid powertrains in-
volves many parameters, variables, constraints, and objectives.
It is expected that a thorough comparison of the different types
of fuel cell hybrid powertrains will assist an optimal system de-
sign.
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Wenzhong Gao (M’01–SM’03) was born in Jiangxi,
China, in 1968. He received the B.S. degree in
aeronautical propulsion control engineering from
Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xi’an, China,
in 1988, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
and computer engineering specializing in electric
power engineering from Georgia Institute of Tech-
nology, Atlanta, in 1999 and 2002, respectively.
Current research interests include power system
modeling and simulation, electric, and hybrid elec-
tric propulsion systems, electric machinery, and
drive, etc.