Control design for efficient and cost-effective distributed fuel cell power electronics system

Batteries in a fuel cell power system are essential to provide the additional load demands during the sharp load transients. This necessitates a power electronics system, which would control the energy flow between the fuel cell stack, the battery and the load during the transient and in the steady-state. In this paper, a cost-effective and efficient power electronic system is proposed for a fuel cell based hybrid power system based on a distributed power electronics topology. The system includes a hierarchical controlling architecture, in which the master control optimizes the control parameters of the individual subsystem controls, which in turn optimizes the performance and efficiency of the overall system while nullifying the effects of load transients on the fuel cell stack subsystem. The power electronics system concept is further experimentally validated using a four module bidirectional DC-DC converter with Nexa PEM stack.