Hybrid electric vehicles have received considerable attention because of their ability to improve fuel consumption compared to conventional vehicles. In this paper, a series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle is used because they combine the advantages of the other two configurations. In this paper, the control unit for a series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle is implemented using a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) strategy. The NMPC strategy needs to create a vehicle energy management optimization problem, which consists of the cost function and its constraints. The cost function describes the required control objectives, which are to improve fuel consumption and obtain a good dynamic response to the required speed while maintaining a stable value of the state of charge (SOC) for batteries. While the cost function is subject to the physical constraints and the mathematical prediction model that evaluate vehicle's behavior based on the current vehicle measurements. The optimization problem is solved at each sampling step using the (SQP) algorithm to obtain the optimum operating points of the vehicle's energy converters, which are represented by the torque of the vehicle components.
Upkeeping the Battery State-Of-Charge (SoC) and its life are of great significance in Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) & Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV). This is possible by integrating Solar Photovoltaic Panels (PPs) on the Roof-top of the BEVs & HEVs. However, unlike Solar Powered Vehicle Charging stations and other PV applications where the solar panels are installed in such a way to extract the maximum Photon energy incident on the panel, vehicle Roof-top mount Solar PPs face many challenges in extracting maximum Power due to partial shading issues especially under dynamic conditions when passing under trees, high rise buildings and cloud passages. This paper proposes a new strategy called “Super-capacitor Assisted Photovoltaic Array”. In which Photovoltaic Modules are integrated with Super-capacitors to improve the transient performance of the Photovoltaic Array system. The design of proposed Super-capacitor Assisted PV array is validated & its performance is compared with conventional PV array in Matlab/ Simulink environment.