Title: A two-stage power electronic interface for fuel cell-based power supply system

Authors: A. Kirubakaran, Shailendra Jain, R.K. Nema

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal 462 051, M.P., India. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal 462 051, M.P., India. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal 462 051, M.P., India

Abstract: The increasing energy demands, insufficient availability of power generation and increasing global environmental problems, need alternate/green power sources. Among the different green power technologies such as wind power, photovoltaic, gas turbine and fuel cell, the fuel cell-based distributed generation is considered as one of the most promising solutions for stand-alone/grid applications due to its cleanliness, modularity and higher potential capability. The selection of a power conditioning unit plays an important role to maintain the stability of the system and to improve the performance of fuel cell system. While using a single-stage DC/AC inverter with step up transformer for stand-alone/gird applications, the major issue is high current flow through the inverter and primary side of the transformer. This paper presents a two-stage power conditioning unit, a DC/DC boost converter combined with a DC/AC inverter for fuel cell system to reduce the current level at the DC/AC inverter.

Keywords: DC/DC converters; DC/AC inverters; PEM fuel cells; power electronics interface; active-reactive power flow control; power generation; green energy; power conditioning units.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPELEC.2011.038889

International Journal of Power Electronics, 2011 Vol.3 No.2, pp.111 - 133

Published online: 31 Jan 2015 *

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