Rule-based energy management strategy is a heuristic real-time energy management control strategy in which human expertise, engineering perception, and the load characteristics are used to design a rule set. This kind of energy management control strategy does not require a prior knowledge of predefined driving cycle; it is computationally efficient and simple to implement. It has been broadly used in manufacturing vehicle and academic research [
38,
39,
40]. The control performance of rule-based energy management control strategy relies on the initial conditions and rules. Nonetheless, the exact initial conditions and rules themselves are the main problems that require large numbers of mathematical analysis and theoretical foundation. To find appropriate parameters, comprehensive calibrations and modifications are required in order to improve the control performance for a specified EV characteristic and driving cycle. Therefore, the development of rule-based energy management control strategy is protracted and dependent on the specific characteristic of the vehicle and driving cycle [
40]. Furthermore, no optimization techniques are related to this strategy, thus the optimal solutions are not guaranteed. This control strategy can be divided into deterministic rule-based energy management control strategy and fuzzy rule-based energy management strategy as presented in the following descriptions.
5.1.1. Deterministic rule-based energy management strategy
Deterministic rule
-based energy management strategy for battery hybrid EV can be subdivided into power follower (load follower) control strategy [
30,
31,
32], frequency
-based (power split) control strategy [
42,
43], and adaptive power split control strategy. In battery
/fuel cell hybrid EV, battery
/fuel cell is used as the main energy source while SC is availed as the auxiliary energy storage. In 1999, Faggioli et al. [
44], proposed the implementation of SC connected to a bi
-directional DC-DC converter for buffering peak power in battery
/fuel cell hybrid EV. The energy management control strategy employed the energy conservative law between vehicle kinetic energy and stored energy inside SC and controlled all energy sources following the specific rules. However, the best solution appeared in fuel cell EV testing with the ECE
-15 urban driving cycle that consumed the energy stored inside SC of about 37
%, which lead to the inefficiency of utilization the energy stored in SC.
Dixon et al. [
45,
46] used the energy conservative theory for the vehicle kinetic energy and the SC stored energy to increase the transient performance of the BHEV, and the lifetime of the battery. From this principle, peak power discharge and recharge of the battery are avoided by the hybridization of battery and SC. In these papers (as mentioned above), the cascade control of SC charge (outer loop) and SC current control (inner loop) is used. The SC charge control is compared with the SC charge reference, which is generated from the reference charge curve considering vehicle speed and battery state of charge into account, with the actual SC charge. The reference charge curve allows the SC to be charged at a low state of charge if the battery is fully charged. Thus, the energy stored in SC is inefficiently utilized. Moreover, the generation of time-varying SC current reference,
, is not robust where the current reference is bounded by the current bandwidth limiter. The current bandwidth is obtained by multiplying the specific voltage gain between battery voltage,
, and SC voltage,
, with the difference between the time-varying actual load current,
, and the maximum battery current,
. The SC current reference generation is given by the following equation [
46].
Thounthong et al. [
42,
43] proposed energy management of FC
/battery
/SC hybrid power source for hybrid EV applications that manage the energy exchanges between the sources and the propulsion load (not consider power losses). The three control strategies used are: (1) charge mode, when the FC supplies energy to the battery and SC and to the load, (2) discharge mode, when FC, battery, and SC supply energy to the load, (3) recovery mode, when the load supplies energy to the battery and SC. In the discharge mode, DC bus voltage is regulated by SC current that is generated by means of energy and power calculation. The SC current reference is limited by its limitation function. This limiter is developed based on human
-expert in finding an appropriate working point, so comprehensive calibration and tuning to find the suitable point are required. With this algorithm, the control processor is loaded with energy and power calculation. In fact, a stiff DC bus voltage can be obtained by directly controlling of SC current and DC bus voltage as proposed in [
47], [
29] instead of power and energy respectively. In addition, the evaluation of energy source capacity and testing with a standard driving cycle, which is the essential tasks to prove the effectiveness of the control strategy and energy economy, had not been executed. The SC voltage was decreased by only 8% due to the improper size of the SC thus ineffective utilized the stored energy in the SC. Moreover, the advantage in terms of energy consumption for the driving cycle supplied by FC had not been considered, therefore, the effectiveness could not be fully confirmed; whether the energy supplied by the HESS is lower than a single source. Moreover, the battery is still repeatedly charged by FC, therefore the battery life could be reduced
.
Wong et al. [
29] improved the control strategy processing by controlling the voltage and current of fuel cell
/battery
/SC for a power-sharing in the hybrid EV instead of controlling power and energy of each source. The strategy uses three algebraic current algorithms to manage the current of each source so that the DC bus is fixed. The results of this work show that SC can supply transient and steady state current instead of battery and FC until the SC voltage reaches the minimum voltage limit, then FC and battery take over the load instead. The function of the battery is to support during vehicle start
-up period when the other sources are not ready. However, the method of evaluation SC size has not been mentioned therefore the energy stored in the SC is inefficiently utilized. Moreover, the proposed system had not been tested with a standard driving cycle to confirm implementation in real-world driving.
An advanced energy management system for controlling the SC is proposed by Armenta et al. [
14] by utilizing the energy conservative law between the vehicle kinetic energy and the SC stored energy. The control strategy is to discharge SC based on the minimal power delivered to the load, to give enough space for absorbing regenerative braking energy. According to this strategy, excessive discharge power from the battery is prevented, and a new driving cycle can be started naturally, even though the vehicle requires a high acceleration. The principle of the control strategy is by substituting the square of speed in vehicle kinetic energy equation with the fundamental speed equation, so a new vehicle kinetic energy equation can be derived, and the instantaneous ideal power supplied by SC is achieved by the differentiating the energy. The SC power is then discretized for controlling power by considering charge
/discharge losses of vehicle transmission system. This power uses discrete control in three strategies: acceleration strategy, cruising strategy, and braking strategy. The simulation results show that the proposed control strategies can reduce battery peak power and enhance driving range. However, the simulation results of the three ideal driving cycles are not practical whereby the regenerative braking power is sufficient for charging SC until it is full, without requiring any support from the battery [
34]
. In general, the amount of energy supplied by SC to the vehicle in acceleration is higher than the regenerative braking energy recovered whereby it is dissipated into the powertrain system forth and back. Thus, the regenerative braking energy alone is not enough for recharging SC until it is full.
Wangsupphaphol et al. [
48] has presented a simple HESS and SC current control approach for electric vehicle applications. Instead of managing SC power, SC current control is significantly simpler and more effective for reducing battery power and energy usage. The contribution is to relate the SC current reference to vehicle acceleration or deceleration, allowing SC current to regulate vehicle dynamic power. In addition, SC capacity calculation has provided in this work because of the heavier the SC mass the larger power and energy consumption, which most of the HESS studied in the past has ignored. This design philosophy was highlighted in a Japanese automobile manufacturer’s U.S. patent application. However, this work was limited by the real-vehicle experiment to prove the actual effectiveness of the proposed strategy.
Another deterministic rule-based energy management strategy termed as fixed
-frequency power split has been proposed and validated by real
-time simulation in [
8]. In this control strategy, the current required from the battery is reduced by the assisting current from SC, however, the battery is still charged by the shallow negative current in braking phase even though the deep negative current is absorbed by the SC. This can reduce the battery lifetime.
A novel adaptive power split strategy for an EV was proposed in [
26] whereby the load power is filtered as high and low frequency supplied by SC and battery respectively. Two bi
-directional DC-DC converters had been used for interfacing battery and SC to DC voltage bus. The control strategies deal with voltage and current instead of energy and power, so the computational effort is reduced. However, slow changing of filter’s time constant of the proposed adaptive splitter allows the battery to supply high
-frequency power instead of SC once the SC has low energy, thus can damage the battery rapidly. Moreover, the slow dynamic of SC voltage control loop, generated by the adapter, causes SC voltage exceeding the upper limit, which may jeopardize safety and not suitable for EV applications.
Kalman filter used for power splitting EMS in tuk-tuk EV was proposed by Karunarathne et al. [
49]. The converter for SC and battery is used thus the power of them can be control properly. The power split technic can save battery SOC and SOH thus improve driving range. Though, this is inevitable trade off with the complex control structure and weight of the converters which are the crucial important for EV applications. In addition, SC capacity calculation was not declared thus the effectiveness of energy reduction may be doubted.
5.1.2. Fuzzy rule-based energy management strategy
Fuzzy rule-based energy management control strategy is an extended type of the deterministic rule-based energy management control strategy. The principle of this control strategy is to develop a group of fuzzy rules (IF-THEN) from human knowledge and cognition whereby the mathematical model of the system is not necessary. The core benefits of fuzzy rule-based energy management control strategy are its robustness to noise and variation in component parameters. Nevertheless, membership function and fuzzy rule are generally derived from human expertise and cognition; hence a noble control performance cannot be guaranteed. The performance of fuzzy logic control mostly relies on the designer’s expertise. Fuzzy rule-based control strategy implemented in EV power source control can be grouped into two categories: conventional fuzzy logic control and fuzzy sliding mode control.
Wang et al. [
50] proposed the conventional fuzzy logic control for controlling SC which are connected parallel to the battery main energy storage for improving the energy recapture efficiency and extending the driving range. The fuzzy control strategy employs load power, SOC of the battery and SC, to determine the proportion of the power from the battery to supply the load. The simulation results, implemented in ADVISOR 2002 and compared to the traditional logic threshold strategy, show that the proposed fuzzy logic control can reduce battery peak power and improve the energy recapture efficiency by 50% and 10% respectively.
Xiaoliang et al. [
51], proposed the frequency decoupling method to manage the power of SC. The conventional fuzzy logic control is implemented to manage the energy contents inside SC while the battery is passively controlled. The driving cycle, road conditions, and load current are used as the fuzzy input variables and then processed by using state flow in MATLAB to produce SC current reference. The experimental results tested with the ECE
-15 driving cycle show that the lower of decoupling frequency allows the higher SC energy supplied to the load. However, the intuitively optimum decoupling frequency is unknown but must be determined based on human expertise. Thus, the minimized battery’s energy consumption cannot be confirmed. The low decoupling frequency causes the battery to recharge the SC in deceleration with the regenerative braking power, even though the battery supplies less power in acceleration.
Zandi et al. [
52] proposed the conventional fuzzy logic control for controlling battery and SC which are parallel with FC main energy source. The fuzzy rules, established from SC, battery voltage, and load power, are designed to manage the energy and power contents inside battery and SC in any operating modes, i.e., recovery, normal, and overload cooperative working with FC. Three DC-DC converters for FC, battery, and SC are employed. Three different controllers are employed: the state feedback controller (for FC control), the fuzzy logic controller (for SC and battery control) and sliding mode controller (for switching control). The experimental results show the perfection of high dynamic power from SC and battery to assist the FC power, moreover, DC bus voltage is always steady even if facing a sudden step load. However, the complexity and high computational requirements processing these controllers cannot be avoided.
Cao et al. [
53] proposed fuzzy sliding mode controller which combines the benefits of fuzzy control and sliding mode control. The control objective changes from tracking error to sliding mode function by creating S
-Function incline to zero. Since the fuzzy sliding mode control could soften the control signal that reduces the chattering happening in common sliding mode control, so the robustness is improved. In the experiment, the fuzzy sliding mode control is compared with the PID control; and the results show an improvement in energy saving, faster response and more reliable performances achieved by the fuzzy sliding mode control.
Li et al. [
54] proposed a hybrid power system that composed of an FC, battery, and SC for a tramway power supply. The energy management control strategy is based on a combination of fuzzy logic control and Haar
-wavelet transform. The energy management control strategy can reduce transient peak power demand while maintaining high-efficiency mechanism performance of FC. The results show that the proposed energy management control strategy can split the main positive high
-frequency power from FC. The battery will respond to the medium frequency power while the high
-frequency power is supported by SC.