Control method of multiple power converter to reduce deterioration of fuel cells

Fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle (FCHEV) is attractive because it has longer driving range than electric vehicle and does not emit greenhouse effect gas. However, there is a problem that the lifetime of fuel cell becomes shorter by degradation progresses under the conditions such as load variation and the operation in considerable lower or higher power than rated power. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a control method of a multiple power converter which is configured by a boost converter connected to a fuel cell stack and a bidirectional converter connected to an electric double layer capacitor (EDLC) bank. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed control method was verified by experiments.