Power-Trading Control of Electrical Loads

This paper describes a special solution for optimal control of electrical loads onboard vehicles, names “Power-Trading”, to cope with increasing implementation and use of comfort functionalities. The purpose of this strategy is to limit the energy consumption, related to CO2 emissions; it is based on a real-time “power-trading” management looking for the best balance between available energy “offer” from power suppliers and requested energy “demand” from electrical loads, similar to stockmarket mechanisms. A “cost” of electrical energy is calculated according to the current power capabilities and status, and is used to fix the energy distribution with the appropriate power levels of transfers.
A master/slave control architecture is considered for implementation of this algorithm in a real-time onboard application. Quantified criteria can be introduced, associated to static and dynamic characteristics of the powertrain and of the electrical loads in the vehicle, to get the optimal level of energy transfer, insuring requested level of comfort with minimum losses or maximum efficiency.
This concept has been implemented in a Matlab/Simulink® environment and simulated within the vehicle's environment as HW-in-the-loop. Longterm driving cycles combined with load-cycles were simulated and the impacts on fuel consumption, comfort, voltage stability... were studied.
The very promising results on a demo-car are presented within this contribution.