Simulation and performance evaluation of 10 kW two stage power electronic interface for fuel cell based power supply system

In recent years, fuel cell is gaining more popularity for residential/grid connected applications due to its higher efficiency, cleanliness, modularity and quick startup over other renewable energy sources. But the performance of the fuel cell is affected by its slow response characteristics for sudden changes in load. Therefore, a suitable power conditioning unit is very important for better voltage regulation and to reduce the overall system cost. Moreover the current flowing through the single stage DC-AC inverter followed by a step up transformer is very high, which increases the inverter current rating and losses. In this paper, a simple DC-DC boost converter connected in series with DC-AC inverter is presented. The proposed power electronic interface is designed for 10 kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell. The performance of the proposed converter is analyzed in MATLAB/Simulink environment and is compared with single stage.