A novel data-driven energy management strategy for fuel cell hybrid electric bus based on improved twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm

With the prosperity of artificial intelligence in recent years, energy management strategies (EMSs) based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) have become the mainstream approach to ensure efficient energy distribution of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Moreover, in terms of developing sustainable urban public transportation systems, zero-emission fuel cell hybrid electric buses (FCHEBs) are more promising than hybrid electric buses (HEBs). Given that, this article proposes a novel data-driven EMS based on DRL to enhance the training efficiency of the proposed EMS while improving the fuel economy of an FCHEB. In this article, to optimize the power allocation of the FCHEB, an improved twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm combined with prioritized experience replay is innovatively formulated, and then a promising EMS based on it is proposed. Furthermore, to enhance the adaptability and improve the training efficiency of the proposed EMS, a stochastic training environment is established with massive real-world velocity data, and a pre-training method using the global optimal experience is designed. Simulation results show that the proposed EMS improves fuel economy by 5.87% compared with the EMS based on original TD3, reaching 97.15% of the global optimal dynamic programming method.