Passivity Based Control and Fuzzy Logic Estimation applied to DC hybrid power source using Fuel Cell and supercapacitor

Fuel Cells (FCs) are a good alternative for using clean energy in most of residential and industrial applications. Therefore, their slow dynamics and difficulty to respond to the abrupt changes of load leads to the preference or the adoption of the FC´s association with one or more power sources of high dynamics, such as supercapacitors (SCs) or batteries. This paper presents the study of a hybrid power sources system using FC as a main source, a DC link and supercapacitor as an auxiliary power source as well. The whole system is modelled in state space equations. The energy management is reached by using passivity-Based Control (PBC). PBC is a very powerful nonlinear technique dealing with important system information like the system´s total energy. A Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) is used in this work to estimate the immeasurable desired supercapacitor current which is necessary for controlling the studied system by PBC. Stability proof and simulation results are given.