Optimal Energy Management in Hybrid Electric Trucks Using Route Information

Overview & Synopsis

To benchmark a hybrid vehicle’s Energy Management Strategy (EMS) usually a given, often certified, velocity trajectory is exploited. In this paper it is reasoned that it is also beneficial to optimize the velocity trajectory. Especially optimizing the vehicle braking trajectories, through maximization of energy recuperation, results in considerable fuel savings on the same traveled distance. Given future route (target velocities as function of traveled distance/location), traffic, and possibly weather information, together with the vehicle’s road load parameters, the future power request trajectory can be estimated. Dynamic Programming (DP) techniques can then be used to predict the optimal power split trajectory for the upcoming route, such that a desired state-of-charge at the end of the route is reached. The DP solution is re-calculated at a certain rate in order to adapt to changing conditions, e.g., traffic conditions, and used in a lower level real-time EMS to guarantee both battery state-of-charge as well as minimal fuel consumption.