Energy Management Strategy Implementation for Hybrid Electric Vehicles Using Genetic Algorithm Tuned Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle Controller

Abstract

To reduce apace extraction of natural resources, to plummet the toxic emissions, and to increase the fuel economy for road transportation, hybrid vehicles are found to be promising. Hybrid vehicles use batteries and engine to propel the vehicle which minimizes dependence on liquid fuels. Battery is an important component of hybrid vehicles and is mainly characterized by its state of charge level. Here a modified state of charge estimation algorithm is applied, which includes not only coulomb counting but also open circuit voltage, weighting factor, and correction factor to track the run time state of charge efficiently. Further, presence of battery and engine together needs a prevailing power split scheme for their efficient utilization. In this paper, a fuel efficient energy management strategy for power-split hybrid electric vehicle using modified state of charge estimation method is developed. Here, the optimal values of various governing parameters are firstly computed with genetic algorithm and then fed to Pontryagin’s minimum principle to decide the threshold power at which engine is turned on. This process makes the proposed method robust and provides better chance to improve the fuel efficiency. Engine efficient operating region is identified to operate vehicle in efficient regions and reduce fuel consumption.