A method to size the stack and the battery of a fuel cell vehicle reducing the fuel consumption

Currently, battery electric vehicles are the most popular EV commercially available. However, there is a growing interest for fuel cell electric vehicles (FCVs) because the latest battery technologies do not ensure a comparable range to that of conventional vehicles. Nevertheless, due to the unidirectional nature of energy transformation in a FCV, auxiliary storage systems are necessary to recover braking energy and to cope with peak power demand. In the paper, we propose a joint sizing algorithm of the fuel cell (FC) stack and the battery-based auxiliary storage system: starting from a power split method, the sizing procedure provides a design solution able to reduce the fuel consumption of the FCV. In order to highlights the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, several simulations have been pointed out, according to different driving cycles and power split strategy, and the simulation results are presented and discussed.