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The conversion from existing electrical networks into an all-renewable and environmentally friendly electrification scenario is insufficient to produce and distribute energy efficiently. Electrochemical devices’ premature degradation as a whole caused by electrical stressors in smart grids is incipient from an energy management strategies (EMS) perspective. Namely, few electrical-stress degradation models for photovoltaic panels, batteries, fuel cells, and super/ultra-capacitors (SCs), and particular stressors can be found in the literature. In this article, the basic operating principles for such devices, existing degradation models, and future research hints, including their incorporation in novel EMS, are condensed. The necessity of extending these studies to other stressors and devices is also emphasized. There are many other degradation models by non-electrical stressors, such as climatic conditions and mechanical wear. Although novel EMS should manage both electrical and non-electrical degradation mechanisms and include non-electrochemical devices, models with pure non-electrical-stressors are not the subject of this review since they already exist. Moreover, studies for the degradation of non-electrochemical devices by electrical stressors are very scarce.

Electric forklifts, dominantly powered by lead acid batteries, are widely used for material handling in factories, warehouses, and docks. The long charging time and short working time characteristics of the lead acid battery module results in the necessity of several battery modules to support one forklift. Compared with the cost and time consuming lead acid battery charging system, a fuel cell/battery hybrid power module could be more convenient for a forklift with fast hydrogen refueling and long working time. In this paper, based on the characteristics of a fuel cell and a battery, a prototype hybrid forklift with a fuel cell/battery hybrid power system is constructed, and its hardware and software are designed in detail. According to the power demand of driver cycles and the state of charge (SOC) of battery, an energy management strategy based on load current following for the hybrid forklift is proposed to improve system energy efficiency and dynamic response performance. The proposed energy management strategy will fulfill the power requirements under typical driving cycles, achieve reasonable power distribution between the fuel cell and battery and, thus, prolong its continuous working time. The proposed energy management strategy is implemented in the hybrid forklift prototype and its effectiveness is tested under different operating conditions. The results show that the forklift with the proposed hybrid powered strategy has good performance with different loads, both lifting and moving, in a smooth and steady way, and the output of the fuel cell meets the requirements of its output characteristics, its SOC of battery remaining at a reasonable level.

It is a great challenge for DC microgrids with stochastic renewable sources and volatility loads to achieve better operation performance. This study proposes an energy management strategy based on multiple operating states for a DC microgrid, which is comprised of a photovoltaic (PV) array, a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system, and a battery bank. This proposed strategy can share the power properly and keep the bus voltage steady under different operating states (the state of charge (SOC) of the battery bank, loading conditions, and PV array output power). In addition, a microgrids test platform is established. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed energy management strategy, the strategy is implemented in a hardware system and experimentally tested under different operating states. The experimental results illustrate the good performance of the proposed control strategy for the DC microgrid under different scenarios of power generation and load demand.