Least costly energy management for series hybrid electric vehicles

TL;DR

This paper proposes a real-time energy management strategy for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that minimizes total driving costs, including fuel, grid energy, and battery degradation, demonstrated through extensive simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cost-based optimization approach for energy management in plug-in HEVs and provides a real-time approximation with analytical insights.

Findings

The strategy effectively reduces overall driving costs.

Simulation results show significant cost savings.

The approach adapts to system parameter variations.

Abstract

Energy management of plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) has different challenges from non-plug-in HEVs, due to bigger batteries and grid recharging. Instead of tackling it to pursue energetic efficiency, an approach minimizing the driving cost incurred by the user - the combined costs of fuel, grid energy and battery degradation - is here proposed. A real-time approximation of the resulting optimal policy is then provided, as well as some analytic insight into its dependence on the system parameters. The advantages of the proposed formulation and the effectiveness of the real-time strategy are shown by means of a thorough simulation campaign.