Validation of a power conditioning unit for a fuel cell power system

• Published in: International journal of hydrogen energy 2024-07
• Main Authors: Bhuyan, Kanhu Charan, Pattanaik, Srutisagar, Sahoo, Dillip Kumar, Awad, Mohamed M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Fuel cell; Fuel cell power system; Hysteresis current control; NI-cRIO; Power conditioning unit; Renewable energy
• ISSN: 0360-3199; 1879-3487
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2024.07.297

Distributed power systems can be implemented using different renewable energy sources including fuel cell, one of whose important component is a Power Conditioning Unit. This work focuses on designing and implementing a real-time, multi-stage power conditioning unit for fuel cell-based distributed generation system. The multi-stage unit comprises a fuel cell, DC-DC converter and a single-phase DC-AC inverter. This cascaded boost converter implementation efficiently elevates the voltage which is then fed into inverter to get the desired voltage. The Voltage Mode Control and Hysteresis Current Control techniques govern the Power Conditioning Unit implementation. The simulation setup shows an increased efficiency of 2.71% over the existing power conditioning units. The validation of our simulation models are carried out by establishing a prototype model of the fuel cell power system using a reconfigurable computing unit, NI-cRIO thus making the implementation adaptable to design changes. The hardware implementation matches with our simulation results. [Display omitted] •Fuel cell simulation using MATLAB/Simulink is presented to model various parameters.•The power conditioning unit with DC-DC converters and DC-AC inverters is developed.•Fuel cell power system with real-time data monitoring and control is implemented.•Hardware data with simulation results are compared for validation.