Hybrid fuel cell powered drones energy management strategy improvement and hydrogen saving using real flight test data

This paper deals with hybrid electric fuel cell-powered drones energy management while targeting hydrogen saving and power supply system efficiency improvement. In this context, a commercially available quadcopter powered by the Intelligent Energy 650W power module is adopted as a case study. Its power supply system is based on fuel cell and battery, and the power is conventionally managed using a basic rule-based strategy. To improve power management, a frequency separation rule-based approach is first proposed, and then an equivalent consumption minimization strategy is implemented for fuel economy seeking. An experimental flight test is carried out using a battery-powered hexacopter to extract a real power profile for load requirement modeling. The obtained load profile is repeated several times replicating the hovering phase to obtain a larger mission lifetime. Extensive simulation results clearly show that the proposed power management strategies enables power sources operating in their nominal area, extending their lifetimes, and inducing 3% minimization in hydrogen consumption. This optimization extends the drone endurance as much as the carried fuel amount, and it can increase the world endurance record by 21.81min. It has also an economical benefit, which consists in the operating cost gain reaching 853.2€ per fuel cell module lifecycle. In fleet missions, this gain may further be increased.