Decoupled DC-bus voltage regulation and adaptive energy management for fuel cell/battery/supercapacitor powered vehicle

Abstract

This paper presents a hierarchical energy management and control framework for a fuel cell–battery–supercapacitor hybrid electric vehicle with regulated DC-bus voltage. The proposed architecture decouples DC-bus voltage regulation from energy management by generating a net load current enabling flexible and constraint-aware power allocation among the energy sources. An adaptive frequency-based energy management strategy is developed, incorporating state-of-charge-dependent cutoff frequency and explicit battery availability logic to ensure safe operation under boundary conditions. Inner current control loops; designed via Lyapunov stability theory; guarantee asymptotic tracking of reference currents. Simulation results under standard driving cycles demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves DC-bus voltage regulation, reducing RMSE by up to 28% , while simultaneously mitigating battery stress with reductions of current slew rate up to 24% compared to classical coupled strategy. Real-time hardware-in-the-loop validation on an OPAL-RT platform confirms the controller’s robustness under non-nominal operating scenarios, including battery unavailability events. The proposed approach offers improved voltage stability, enhanced operational flexibility, and superior resilience for multi-source electric powertrains, addressing key challenges in hybrid energy storage system management.