Optimal Operation of a Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle with Battery Thermal and Degradation Model

Proceedings of the American Control Conference, pages 3083–3090, June 2020.

• ACC paper

We propose a control method to optimally use fuel and battery resources for power-split plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) under the case of pre determined driving route and associated energy demand profile. We integrate a battery thermal and degradation model and formulate a mixed-integer convex problem which can be approximately solved with standard efficient solvers. In simulation, we demonstrate that our controller can manage battery operation and state to avoid severe battery degradation, and balance fuel usage with battery degradation depending on ambient temperature or energy demand profiles of the routes. Under various scenarios, the results are validated by the Autonomie software and compared with conventional existing CDCS controller and earlier related work, which only optimized to achieve minimal fuel use and neglects the battery degradation. Lastly, we show our controller is efficient enough to be computed on the on-board vehicle computer and applied in real-time.