A dual decomposition approach to complete energy management for a heavy-duty vehicle

In this paper, we will propose a scalable and systematic procedure to solve the complete vehicle energy management problem, which requires solving a large-scale optimization problem subject to a large number of constraints. We consider a case study of a hybrid heavy-duty vehicle, equipped with an electric machine, a high-voltage battery pack and a refrigerated semi-trailer. The procedure is based on the application of the dual decomposition to the energy management problem. This dual decomposition allows the large-scale optimization problem to be solved by solving several smaller optimization problems, which gives favourable scalability properties. To efficiently decompose the problem, we will decompose the objective function of the optimization problem, being the fuel consumption, into a sum of functions each representing `energy losses´. Using the case study, we will compare the novel methodology based on the dual decomposition with dynamic programming, showing the benefits in terms of computational efficiency of the novel solution strategy. Moreover, we will show the benefits in terms of fuel consumption of complete vehicle energy management.