Title: Application of power electronics with the US DOE distributed generation programme

Authors: Donald Collins, Mark C. Williams, Wayne Surdoval

Addresses: US Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, P.O. Box 880, 3610 Collins Ferry Road, Morgantown, WV 26507–0880, USA. ' US Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, P.O. Box 880, 3610 Collins Ferry Road, Morgantown, WV 26507–0880, USA. ' US Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, P.O. Box 10940, 626 Cochrans Mill Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15236–0940, USA

Abstract: Power electronics play an important role in achieving affordable, highly fuel-efficient fuel cell power generation plants and will enable the US Department of Energy|s Office of Fossil Energy Fuel Cells programme to achieve higher national goals: environmental, economic and energy security. The initial focus on power electronics has been to understand the interactions between the SOFC stack, the power conditioning subsystem and the application load requirements and dynamic behaviour. Advances in lower-cost and high-efficiency power electronic converters and inverters are a major factor in achieving attractive simple cycle fuel to electricity conversion efficiencies of 50% to 60% for DG fuel cell power plants. Functionality and performance requirements for power conditioning subsystems will vary between the numerous possible applications for SOFC power generation technology, providing a highly interesting and challenging future in power systems product engineering and development.

Keywords: distributed generation; solid oxide fuel cells; SOFC; Solid State Energy Alliance; SECA; FutureGen; power management systems; power conditioning; topologies; grid-parallel; power markets; benefits; power electronics; power generation; Department of Energy; United States; USA; converters; inverters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJETP.2007.013030

International Journal of Energy Technology and Policy, 2007 Vol.5 No.2, pp.163 - 186

Published online: 04 Apr 2007 *

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