A new DC-DC converter structure for power flow management in fuel-cell electric vehicles with energy storage systems

Modern fuel cell based electric vehicles should use energy storage devices such as batteries or supercapacitors to guarantee load leveling, assuring braking energy recovery and good performances in transient operations. To this end, converters with bidirectional power flows are needed to connect the accumulators to the DC-link of the motor drive system. In this paper, a new conversion structure for the bidirectional interfacing of two DC voltage sources with a higher voltage DC-link is presented, where only three controllable power electronic switches are needed and where the only limit is that the sum of the two DC voltages must be lower or equal than the motor drive DC-link voltage. The analysis of the converter structure, the control and modulation systems that have been developed and the obtained results are reported.