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Impact of Energy Management Strategies on Hydrogen Consumption and Start-Up/Shut-Down Cycles in Fuel Cell-Ultracapacitor-Battery Vehicles

The use of ultracapacitors in fuel cell electric vehicles holds the potential to promote their advancement by significantly extending the fuel cell lifetime. However, the design of suitable control strategies is critical to take full advantage of the additional degree of freedom and limit the principal causes of fuel cell degradation, such as transient operation and start-up/shut-down cycles. This paper studies the energy management of fuel cell-ultracapacitor-battery hybrid vehicles, investigating different criteria for fuel cell operation to find the best trade-off between hydrogen consumption and the number of start-up/shut-down cycles. In particular, the investigated control criteria are fixed-setpoint and charge-balancing operation. A third strategy is considered as a reference for potential performance improvements of predictive energy management. The study reveals that, in fuel cell-ultracapacitor-battery vehicles, the only significant source of fuel cell degradation are start-up/shut-down cycles. Here, harmful transients are limited because ultracapacitors enable stationary fuel cell operation without compromising battery life. Moreover, the investigation shows that the ultracapacitor and battery systems can sustain short driving cycles alone, avoiding fuel cell starts to preserve its life. The simulation results indicate that the fixed-setpoint strategy yields a better trade-off between hydrogen consumption and start-up/shut-down cycles than the charge-balancing one. Additionally, the study demonstrates that a predictive energy management strategy can significantly reduce degradation without hindering system efficiency.