A Supervisory Energy-Saving Controller for a Novel Anti-Idling System of Service Vehicles

This paper presents a supervisory controller of a regenerative auxiliary power system (RAPS) designed for service vehicles to reduce engine idling. The RAPS is capable of electrifying auxiliary devices by using recaptured kinetic energy, which distinguishes it from its counterparts, auxiliary power units, and auxiliary battery-powered units. The supervisory controller is a model predictive controller (MPC) to guarantee that service vehicles save energy by achieving two objectives: they minimize the energy consumption of the auxiliary systems and optimize the output power of the engine. Thanks to the multiobjective optimization feature of the MPC, the proposed supervisory controller optimizes the power consumption of auxiliary systems and the power flow of the powertrain simultaneously for the first time. In order to show the advantages brought on by the proposed RAPS with the controller over the conventional vehicles, a case study is performed and analyzed. The results demonstrate that the RAPS can help a light service vehicle save about 7% fuel under the study scenario and even more for heavy vehicles.