Life cycle cost-oriented energy management and configuration co-optimization for fuel cell hybrid ships

Fuel cell hybrid ships (FCHS) face challenges in balancing economic optimization, power allocation, and capacity configuration. This study develops an energy management strategy coupled configuration optimization framework integrating adaptive cut-off frequency and low-pass filter for the lithium-ion battery (LIB)-supercapacitor (SC)-FC system. The framework coordinates LIB/SC series-parallel connections and FC output, applying adaptive frequency-splitting thresholds while explicitly accounting for life cycle cost (LCC) and battery degradation induced by dynamic marine load profiles. The Dung Beetle Optimizer delivers the best convergence and accuracy among the five algorithms, achieving LCCs of 4,049,865, 4,326,147 and 4,631,229 CNY for three configurations. The LCC rises by 1.66% under rough-sea disturbances and 3.73% under market-price fluctuations. Results indicate that this method enhances both economic performance and operational robustness of the LIB-SC-FC configuration, providing insights for designing FCHS.