As the global demand for energy increases, the people of the United States are increasingly subject to high and ever-rising oil prices. Additionally, the U.S. transportation sector accounts for 27% of total nationwide Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. In the U.S. transportation sector, light-duty passenger vehicles account for about 58% of energy use. Therefore incremental improvements in light-duty vehicle efficiency and energy use will significantly impact the overall landscape of energy use in America. A crucial step to designing and building more efficient vehicles is modeling powertrain energy consumption. While accurate modeling is indeed key to effective and efficient design, a fundamental understanding of the powertrain and auxiliary systems that contribute to energy consumption for a vehicle is equally as important if not more important. This thesis presents a methodology that has been packaged into a tool, called VTool, that can be used to estimate the energy consumption of a vehicle powertrain. The method is intrinsically designed to foster understanding of the vehicle powertrain as it relates to energy consumption while still providing reasonably accurate results. VTool explicitly calculates the energy required at the wheels of the vehicle to complete a prescribed drive cycle and then explicitly applies component efficiencies to find component losses and the overall energy consumption for the drive cycle. In calculating component efficiencies and losses, VTool offers several tunable parameters that can be used to calibrate the tool for a particular vehicle, compare powertrain architectures, or simply explore the tradeoffs and sensitivities of certain parameters. In this paper, the method is fully and explicitly developed to model Electric Vehicles (EVs), Series Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) and Parallel HEVs for various different drive cycles. VTool has also been validated for use in UDDS and HwFET cycles using on-road test results from the 2011 EcoCAR competition. By extension, the method could easily be extended for use in other cycles. The end result is a tool that can predict fuel consumption to a reasonable degree of accuracy for a variety of powertrains, calculate J1711 Utility Factor weighted energy consumption for Extended Range Electric Vehicles (EREVs) and determine the Well-to-Wheel impact of a given powertrain or fuel. VTool does all of this while performing all calculations explicitly and calculating all component losses to allow the user maximum access which promotes understanding and comprehension of the fundamental dynamics of automotive fuel economy and the powertrain as a system. / Master of Science

Résumé : Depuis la fin du XXème siècle, l’augmentation du prix du pétrole brut et les problématiques environnementales poussent l’industrie automobile à développer des technologies plus économes en carburant et générant moins d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Parmi ces technologies, les véhicules électriques hybrides constituent une solution viable et performante. En alliant un moteur électrique et un moteur à combustion, ces véhicules possèdent un fort potentiel de réduction de la consommation de carburant sans sacrifier son autonomie. La présence de deux moteurs et de deux sources d’énergie requiert un contrôleur, appelé système de gestion d’énergie, responsable de la commande simultanée des deux moteurs. Les performances du véhicule en matière de consommation dépendent en partie de la conception de ce contrôleur. Les véhicules électriques hybrides rechargeables, plus récents que leur équivalent non rechargeable, se distinguent par l’ajout d’un chargeur interne permettant la recharge de la batterie pendant l’arrêt du véhicule et par conséquent la décharge de celle-ci au cours d’un trajet. Cette particularité ajoute un degré de complexité pour ce qui est de la conception du système de gestion d’énergie. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons un modèle complet du véhicule dédié à la conception du contrôleur. Nous étudions ensuite la dépendance de la commande optimale des deux moteurs par rapport au profil de vitesse suivi au cours d’un trajet ainsi qu’à la quantité d’énergie électrique disponible au début d’un trajet. Cela nous amène à proposer une technique d’auto-apprentissage visant l’amélioration de la stratégie de gestion d’énergie en exploitant un certain nombre de données enregistrées sur les trajets antérieurs. La technique proposée permet l’adaptation de la stratégie de contrôle vis-à-vis du trajet en cours en se basant sur une pseudo-prédiction de la totalité du profil de vitesse. Nous évaluerons les performances de la technique proposée en matière de consommation de carburant en la comparant avec une stratégie optimale bénéficiant de la connaissance exacte du profil de vitesse ainsi qu’avec une stratégie de base utilisée couramment dans l’industrie. // Abstract : Since the end of the XXth century, the increase in crude oil price and the environmental concerns lead the automotive industry to develop technologies that can improve fuel savings and decrease greenhouse gases emissions. Among these technologies, the hybrid electric vehicles stand as a reliable and efficient solution. By combining an electrical motor and an internal combustion engine, these vehicles can bring a noticeable improvement in terms of fuel consumption without sacrificing the vehicle autonomy. The two motors and the two energy storage systems require a control unit, called energy management system, which is responsible for the command decision of both motors. The vehicle performances in terms of fuel consumption greatly depend on this control unit. The plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are a more recent technology compared to their non plug-in counterparts. They have an extra internal battery charger that allows the battery to be charged during OFF state, implying a possible discharge during a trip. This particularity adds complexity when it comes to the design of the energy management system. In this thesis, a complete vehicle model is proposed and used for the design of the controller. A study is then carried out to show the dependence between the optimal control of the motors and the speed profile followed during a trip as well as the available electrical energy at the beginning of a trip. According to this study, a self-learning optimization technique that aims at improving the energy management strategy by exploiting some driving data recorded on previous trips is proposed. The technique allows the adaptation of the control strategy to the current trip based on a pseudo-prediction of the total speed profile. Fuel consumption performances for the proposed technique will be evaluated by comparing it with an optimal control strategy that benefits from the exact a priori knowledge of the speed profile as well as a basic strategy commonly used in industry.

Transportation is one of the sectors that directly touches the major challenges that energy utilities are faced with, namely, the significant increase in energy demand and environmental issues. In view of these concerns and the problems with the supply of oil, the pursuit of alternative fuels for meeting the future energy demand of the transport sector has gained much attention. The future of transportation is believed to be based on electric drives in fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) or plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). There are compelling reasons for this to happen: the efficiency of electric drive is at least three times greater than that of combustion processes and these vehicles produce almost zero emissions, which can help relieve many environmental concerns. The future of PEVs is even more promising because of the availability of electricity infrastructure. Furthermore, governments around the world are showing interest in this technology by investing billions of dollars in battery technology and supportive incentive programs for the customers to buy these vehicles. In view of all these considerations, power systems specialists must be prepared for the possible impacts of these new types of loads on the system and plan for the optimal transition to these new types of vehicles by considering the electricity grid constraints. Electricity infrastructure is designed to meet the highest expected demand, which only occurs a few hundred hours per year. For the remaining time, in particular during off-peak hours, the system is underutilized and could generate and deliver a substantial amount of energy to other sectors such as transport by generating hydrogen for FCVs or charging the batteries in PEVs. This thesis investigates the technical and economic feasibility of improving the utilization of electricity system during off-peak hours through alternative-fuel vehicles (AFVs) and develops optimization planning models for the transition to these types of vehicles. These planning models are based on decomposing the region under study into different zones, where the main power generation and electricity load centers are located, and considering the major transmission corridors among them. An emission cost model of generation is first developed to account for the environmental impacts of the extra load on the electricity grid due to the introduction of AFVs. This is followed by developing a hydrogen transportation model and, consequently, a comprehensive optimization model for transition to FCVs in the context of an integrated electricity and hydrogen system. This model can determine the optimal size of the hydrogen production plants to be developed in different zones in each year, optimal hydrogen transportation routes and ultimately bring about hydrogen economy penetration. This model is also extended to account for optimal transition to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Different aspects of the proposed transition models are discussed on a developed 3-zone test system. The practical application of the proposed models is demonstrated by applying them to Ontario, Canada, with the purpose of finding the maximum potential penetrations of AFVs into Ontario’s transport sector by 2025, without jeopardizing the reliability of the grid or developing new infrastructure. Applying the models to this real-case problem requires the development of models for Ontario’s transmission network, generation capacity and base-load demand during the planning study. Thus, a zone-based model for Ontario’s transmission network is developed relying on major 500 and 230 kV transmission corridors. Also, based on Ontario’s Integrated Power System Plan (IPSP) and a variety of information provided by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), a zonal pattern of base-load generation capacity is proposed. The optimization models developed in this study involve many parameters that must be estimated; however, estimation errors may substantially influence the optimal solution. In order to resolve this problem, this thesis proposes the application of robust optimization for planning the transition to AFVs. Thus, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation is performed to find the impact of estimation errors in the parameters of the planning models; the results of this study reveals the most influential parameters on the optimal solution. Having a knowledge of the most affecting parameters, a new robust optimization approach is applied to develop robust counterpart problems for planning models. These models address the shortcoming of the classical robust optimization approach where robustness is ensured at the cost of significantly losing optimality. The results of the robust models demonstrate that with a reasonable trade-off between optimality and conservatism, at least 170,000 FCVs and 900,000 PHEVs with 30 km all-electric range (AER) can be supported by Ontario’s grid by 2025 without any additional grid investments.

Transportation is one of the sectors that directly touches the major challenges that energy utilities are faced with, namely, the significant increase in energy demand and environmental issues. In view of these concerns and the problems with the supply of oil, the pursuit of alternative fuels for meeting the future energy demand of the transport sector has gained much attention. The future of transportation is believed to be based on electric drives in fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) or plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). There are compelling reasons for this to happen: the efficiency of electric drive is at least three times greater than that of combustion processes and these vehicles produce almost zero emissions, which can help relieve many environmental concerns. The future of PEVs is even more promising because of the availability of electricity infrastructure. Furthermore, governments around the world are showing interest in this technology by investing billions of dollars in battery technology and supportive incentive programs for the customers to buy these vehicles. In view of all these considerations, power systems specialists must be prepared for the possible impacts of these new types of loads on the system and plan for the optimal transition to these new types of vehicles by considering the electricity grid constraints. Electricity infrastructure is designed to meet the highest expected demand, which only occurs a few hundred hours per year. For the remaining time, in particular during off-peak hours, the system is underutilized and could generate and deliver a substantial amount of energy to other sectors such as transport by generating hydrogen for FCVs or charging the batteries in PEVs. This thesis investigates the technical and economic feasibility of improving the utilization of electricity system during off-peak hours through alternative-fuel vehicles (AFVs) and develops optimization planning models for the transition to these types of vehicles. These planning models are based on decomposing the region under study into different zones, where the main power generation and electricity load centers are located, and considering the major transmission corridors among them. An emission cost model of generation is first developed to account for the environmental impacts of the extra load on the electricity grid due to the introduction of AFVs. This is followed by developing a hydrogen transportation model and, consequently, a comprehensive optimization model for transition to FCVs in the context of an integrated electricity and hydrogen system. This model can determine the optimal size of the hydrogen production plants to be developed in different zones in each year, optimal hydrogen transportation routes and ultimately bring about hydrogen economy penetration. This model is also extended to account for optimal transition to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Different aspects of the proposed transition models are discussed on a developed 3-zone test system. The practical application of the proposed models is demonstrated by applying them to Ontario, Canada, with the purpose of finding the maximum potential penetrations of AFVs into Ontario’s transport sector by 2025, without jeopardizing the reliability of the grid or developing new infrastructure. Applying the models to this real-case problem requires the development of models for Ontario’s transmission network, generation capacity and base-load demand during the planning study. Thus, a zone-based model for Ontario’s transmission network is developed relying on major 500 and 230 kV transmission corridors. Also, based on Ontario’s Integrated Power System Plan (IPSP) and a variety of information provided by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), a zonal pattern of base-load generation capacity is proposed. The optimization models developed in this study involve many parameters that must be estimated; however, estimation errors may substantially influence the optimal solution. In order to resolve this problem, this thesis proposes the application of robust optimization for planning the transition to AFVs. Thus, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation is performed to find the impact of estimation errors in the parameters of the planning models; the results of this study reveals the most influential parameters on the optimal solution. Having a knowledge of the most affecting parameters, a new robust optimization approach is applied to develop robust counterpart problems for planning models. These models address the shortcoming of the classical robust optimization approach where robustness is ensured at the cost of significantly losing optimality. The results of the robust models demonstrate that with a reasonable trade-off between optimality and conservatism, at least 170,000 FCVs and 900,000 PHEVs with 30 km all-electric range (AER) can be supported by Ontario’s grid by 2025 without any additional grid investments.

The purpose of study is to research the development of electric vehicle technology in the United States. This study describes the United States public policies towards electric vehicle technology and system of innovation approaches. The government roles with the help of national system of innovation have been also covered in this study. The point of departure was the study of available literature and U.S energy policy acts which illustrates that the break-through in electric vehicles still not only depended on better battery technology and infrastructure for charging stations but also on social, economic and political factors. The important actors involved in the process are both at local and international level are private firms, governmental departments, research and development (R&D) institutes, nongovernment organizations (NGO’s) and environmental organizations etc. The arguments which are put forward in the background of development of such technologies are to reduce dependence on foreign oil and to reduce emissions of harmful gasses.

This article explores the potential of using real-world driving patterns to derive PHEV and BEV utility factors and evaluates how different travel and recharging behaviours affect the calculation of the standard SAE J2841 utility factor. The study relies on six datasets of driving data collected monitoring 508,607 conventional fuel vehicles in six European areas and a dataset of synthetic data from 700,000 vehicles in a seventh European area. Sources representing the actual driving behaviour of PHEV together with the WLTP European utility factor are adopted as term of comparison. The results show that different datasets of driving data can yield to different estimates of the utility factor. The SAE J2841 standard method results to be representative of a large variety of behaviours of PHEVs and BEVs' drivers, characterised by a fully-charged battery at the beginning of the trip sequence, thus being representative for fuel economy and emission estimates in the early phase deployment of EVs, charged at home and overnight. However the results show that the SAE J2841 utility factor might need to be revised to account for more complex future scenarios, such as necessity-driven recharge behaviour with less than one recharge per day or a fully deployed recharge infrastructure with more than one recharge per day.

The new generation of cars are so-called Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) which has the grid connection capability. By the introduction of these vehicles, the grid issues will be connected to the private car transportation sector for the first time. The cars from the gird perspective can be considered as a regular load with certain power factor. The effects of this type of new load in distribution grid are studied in this thesis. By modelling the cars as regular load, the effects of the cars in three distinct areas in Stockholm are investigated. The car number in each area is estimated based on the population and commercial density of electricity consumption in the three areas. Afterward, the average electricity consumption by the cars in one day is distributed among 24 hours of the day with peak load in the studied year. This distribution is done by two regulated and unregulated methods. The regulated method is based on the desired pattern of electricity consumption of PHEVs by vehicle owners. On the other hand, the regulated pattern is designed based on encouragement of the car owners to consume electricity for charging their car batteries at low-power hours of day (usually midnight hours). The power system from high voltage lines in Sweden down to 11 kV substations in Stockholm simulated in PSS/E software has been used in this study. The automation program (written in Python) is run in order to get the output report (voltage variation and losses) of the load flow calculations for different hours of day by adding the required power for PHEVs both by regulated and unregulated patterns. The results show the possibility of introducing growing number of cars till year 2050 in each area with existing grid infrastructures. Moreover, the number of cars, yearly and daily electric consumption for PHEVs in pure electric mode are shown in this project and the effects of regulated electricity consumption are investigated. It is concluded that since the car number is estimated based on the population, the areas with higher residential characteristics are more problematic for integration of PHEVs from capacity point of view. Moreover, by regulating the charging pattern of PHEVs, the higher number of PHEVs can be integrated to the grid with the existing infrastructures. In addition, the losses have been decreased in regulated pattern in comparison with unregulated pattern with the same power consumption. The voltage in different substations is within the standard boundaries by adding 100 percent of PHEVs load for both regulated and unregulated patterns in all three areas.

No description available.

In early design phase for new hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) powertrains, simulation isused for the estimation of vehicle fuel consumption. For hybrid electric powertrains,fuel consumption is highly related to powertrain efficiency. While powertrainefficiency of hybrid electric powertrain is not a linear product of efficiencies ofcomponents, it has to be analysed as a sequence of energy conversions includingcomponent losses and energy interaction among components.This thesis is aimed at studying the energy losses and flows and present them in theform of Sankey diagram, later, an adaptive energy management system is developedbased on current rule-based control strategy. The first part involves developing energycalculation block in GT-SUITE corresponding to the vehicle model, calculating allthe energy losses and flows and presenting them in Sankey diagram. The secondpart involves optimizing energy management system control parameters according todifferent representative driving cycles. The third part involves developing adaptiveenergy management system by deploying optimal control parameter based on drivingpattern recognition with the help of SVM (support vector machine).In conclusion, a sturctured way to generate the Sankey diagram has been successfullygenerated and it turns out to be an effective tool to study HEV powertrain efficiencyand fuel economy. In addition, the combination of driving pattern recognition andoptimized control parameters also show a significant potential improvement in fuelconsumption. / Under den tidiga utvecklingsfasen av nya elektrifieradedrivlinor for hybridapplikationer (HEV) används simulering för uppskattning avfordonets bränsleförbrukning. För dess drivlinor är bränsleförbrukningen i hög gradkopplad till drivlinans verkningsgrad. Även om drivlinans verkningsgrad inte ären linjär prokukt av komponenternas verkningsgrad behöve rden analyseras somen sekvens av energiomvandlingar, inklusive förluster och energipåverkan mellankomponenter.Detta examensarbete syftar till att undersöka energiförluster och flöden samtpresentera dessa i form av sankey diagram. Senare utvecklas ett anpassningsbartenergihanteringssystem baserat på nuvarande regelbaserad kontrollstrategi. Deninledande delen involverar utvecklandet av energianalys i GT-SUITE som motsvararfordonsmodellen, beräkningar av totala energiförluster och flöden samt presentationav dessa i ett sankey diagram. Den andra delen innefattar optimering avenergihanteringssystems kontrollparametrar enligt olika representativa körcykler.Den tredje delen involverar utveckling av anpassningsbara energihanteringssystemgenom användning av optimala kontrollparameterar baserad på detektering avkörbeteende med hjälp av SVM ( stödvektormaskin).Slutligen, ett strukturerat sätt att generera sankey diagrammet har med framgånggenererats och visat sig vara ett effektivt verktyg för studier av HEV drivlinorseffektivitet och bränsleekonomi. Dessutom visar kombinationen av detektering avkörbeteende och optimerade kontrollparametrar på en markant potentiell förbättringi bränsleförbrukning.

The automotive industry is undertaking major technological steps in an effort to reduce emissions and fight climate change. To reduce the reliability on fossil fuels a lot of research is invested into electric motors (EM) and their applications. One such application is plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), in which internal combustion engines (ICE) and EM are used in combination, and take turns to propel the vehicle based on driving conditions. The main optimization problem of PHEV is to decide when to use which motor. If this optimization is done with respect to emissions, the entire electric charge should be used up before the end of the trip. But if the charge is used up too early, latter driving segments for which the optimal choice would have been to use the EM will have to be done using the ICE. To address this optimization problem, we studied the fuel consumption during different driving conditions. These driving conditions are characterized by hundreds of sensors which collect data about the state of the vehicle continuously when driving. From these data, we constructed 150 seconds segments, including e.g. vehicle speed, before new descriptive features were engineered for each segment, e.g. max vehicle speed. By using the characteristics of typical driving conditions specified by the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC), segments were labelled as a highway or city road segments. To reduce the dimensions without losing information, principle component analysis was conducted, and a Gaussian mixture model was used to uncover hidden structures in the data. Three machine learning regression models were trained and tested: a linear mixed model, a kernel ridge regression model with linear kernel function, and lastly a kernel ridge regression model with an RBF kernel function. By splitting the data into a training set and a test set the models were evaluated on data which they have not been trained on. The model performance and explanation rate obtained for each model, such as R2, Mean Absolute Error and Mean Squared Error, were compared to find the best model. The study shows that the fuel consumption can be modelled by the sensor data of a PHEV test fleet where 6 features contributes to an explanation ratio of 0.5, thus having highest impact on the fuel consumption. One needs to keep in mind the data were collected during the Covid-19 outbreak where travel patterns were not considered to be normal. No regression model can explain the real world better than what the underlying data does. / Fordonsindustrin vidtar stora tekniska steg för att minska utsläppen och bekämpa klimatförändringar. För att minska tillförlitligheten på fossila bränslen investeras en hel del forskning i elmotorer (EM) och deras tillämpningar. En sådan applikation är laddhybrider (PHEV), där förbränningsmotorer (ICE) och EM används i kombination, och turas om för att driva fordonet baserat på rådande körförhållanden. PHEV: s huvudoptimeringsproblem är att bestämma när man ska använda vilken motor. Om denna optimering görs med avseende på utsläpp bör hela den elektriska laddningen användas innan resan är slut. Men om laddningen används för tidigt måste senare delar av resan, för vilka det optimala valet hade varit att använda EM, göras med ICE. För att ta itu med detta optimeringsproblem, studerade vi bränsleförbrukningen under olika körförhållanden. Dessa körförhållanden kännetecknas av hundratals sensorer som samlar in data om fordonets tillstånd kontinuerligt vid körning. Från dessa data konstruerade vi 150 sekunder segment, inkluderandes exempelvis fordonshastighet, innan nya beskrivande attribut konstruerades för varje segment, exempelvis högsta fordonshastighet. Genom att använda egenskaperna för typiska körförhållanden som specificerats av Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC), märktes segment som motorvägs- eller stadsvägsegment. För att minska dimensioner på data utan att förlora information, användes principal component analysis och en Gaussian Mixture model för att avslöja dolda strukturer i data. Tre maskininlärnings regressionsmodeller skapades och testades: en linjär blandad modell, en kernel ridge regression modell med linjär kernel funktion och slutligen en en kernel ridge regression modell med RBF kernel funktion. Genom att dela upp informationen i ett tränings set och ett test set utvärderades de tre modellerna på data som de inte har tränats på. För utvärdering och förklaringsgrad av varje modell användes, R2, Mean Absolute Error och Mean Squared Error. Studien visar att bränsleförbrukningen kan modelleras av sensordata för en PHEV-testflotta där 6 stycken attribut har en förklaringsgrad av 0.5 och därmed har störst inflytande på bränsleförbrukningen . Man måste komma ihåg att all data samlades in under Covid-19-utbrottet där resmönster inte ansågs vara normala och att ingen regressionsmodell kan förklara den verkliga världen bättre än vad underliggande data gör.