Development of controllers using FPGA for fuel cells in standalone and utility applications

Abstract

In the recent years, increase in consumption of energy, instability of crude oil price and global climate change has forced researchers to focus more on renewable energy sources.Though there are different renewable energy sources available (such as photovoltaic and wind energy), they have some major limitations. The potential techniques which can
provide renewable energy are fuel cell technology which is better than other renewable sources of energy. Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is more efficient, environmental friendly
renewable energy source. This dissertation focuses on load/grid connected fuel cell power system (FCPS) which can be used as a backup power source for household and
commercial units. This backup power source will be efficient and will provide energy at an affordable per unit cost. Load/grid connected fuel cell power system mainly comprises of a fuel cell module, DCDC converter and DC-AC inverter. This thesis primarily focuses on solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) modelling, digital control of DC-DC converter and DC-AC inverter. Extensive simulation results are validated by experimental results. Dynamic mathematical model of SOFC is developed to find out output voltage, efficiency, over potential loss and power density of fuel cell stack. The output voltage of fuel cell is fed to a DC-DC converter to step up the output voltage. Conventional
Proportional-Integral (PI) controller and FPGA based PI controller is implemented and experimentally validated. The output voltage of DC-DC converter is fed to DC-AC inverter. Different pulse width modulation-voltage source inverter (PWM-VSI) control strategy (such as Hysteresis Current Controller (HCC), Adaptive-HCC, Fuzzy-HCC, Adaptive Fuzzy-HCC, Triangular Carrier Current Controller (TCCC) and Triangular Periodical Current Controller (TPCC)) for DC-AC inverter are investigated and validated through extensive simulations using MATLAB/SIMULINK. This work also focuses on number of fuel cells required for application in real time and remedy strategies when one or few fuel cells are malfunctioning. When the required numbers of fuel cells are not available, DC-DC converter is used to step up the output voltage of fuel cell. When there is a malfunction in fuel cell or shortage of hydrogen then a battery is used to provide backup power.