Practical methodology of the integrated design and power control unit for SHEV with multiple power sources

Abstract

Series hybrid electric vehicles (SHEVs) having multiple power sources such as an enginegenerator (EnGen), a battery, and an ultra-capacitor require a power control unit with high power density and reliable control operation. However, manufacturing using separate individual power converters has the disadvantage of low power density and requires a large number of power and signal cable wires. It is also difficult to implement the optimal power distribution and fault management algorithm because of the communication delay between the units. In order to address these concerns, this approach presents a design methodology and a power control algorithm of an integrated power converter for the SHEVs powered by multiple power sources. In this work, the design methodology of the integrated power control unit (IPCU) is firstly elaborately described, and then efficient and reliable power distribution algorithms are proposed. The design works are verified with product-level and vehicle-level performance experiments on a 10-ton SHEV.