Power management of fuel cell and battery fed DC motor drive for electric vehicle application

The credentials of fuel cell (FC) as an alternative source for electric vehicle are not encouraged by many due to its high cost and slow dynamics. Moreover, due to slow dynamics of FC dominated by temperature of fuel delivery system, fast load demand will cause a large voltage drop in a short time, which is recognized as a fuel starvation phenomenon. To overcome this problem, an energy storage system with adequate power capacity is required. Therefore to employ a FC in electric vehicle application and to improve system performance when load demands high energy during transients, the electrical system must have at least an auxiliary power source. This paper describes the arrangement, modeling and control of a hybrid source consisting of FC (as main source) along with a battery (as an auxiliary source) feeding a DC motor for an electric vehicle application. A noble control strategy for the FC and battery hybrid power system has been designed, which enables both active current sharing and source power management. The control system is able to regulate the output power from each source under different scenarios such as motoring and regenerative braking. The static and dynamic behavior of the control system with dc motor load is verified through MATLAB/simulink software.