A power control scheme to improve the performance of a fuel cell hybrid power source for residential application

This paper describes a power control scheme to improve the performance of a fuel cell-battery hybrid power source for residential application. The proposed power control scheme includes a power control strategy to control the power flow of the fuel cell hybrid power system and a digital control technique for a front-end dc-dc converter of the fuel cell. The power control strategy enables the fuel cell to operate within the high efficiency region defined by the polarization curve and efficiency curve of the fuel cell. A dual boost converter with digital control is applied as a front-end dc-dc converter to control the fuel cell output power. The digital control technique of the converter employs a moving-average digital filter into its voltage feedback loop to cancel the low frequency harmonic current drawn from the fuel cell and then limits the fuel cell output current to a current limit using a predictive current limiter to keep the fuel cell operation within the high efficiency region as well as to minimize the fuel cell oxygen starvation.