Single-phase power conditioner with reduced low-frequency current ripple for fuel cells in distributed Generation Applications

This paper is focused on control solutions for a single-phase power conditioner having a fuel cell as primary energy source in a Distributed Generation (DG) system. As the fuel-cell generators are usually connected to the grid through power electronic converters, the ripple of the converter input current has become an important issue to be evaluated. In fact, methods to eliminate the low-frequency ripple current absorbed by the fuel cell is one of the today´s topic of research in power conditioning for fuel cell systems. The aim of this paper is to present a single-phase power conditioner designed to reduce this current ripple. Based on this fact, a power conditioner prototype, composed by a DC- DC and a DC-AC power converters, has been built and a simple control strategy has been implemented to experimentally validate the work.