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This article proposes a digital control scheme to operate a proton exchange membrane fuel cell module of 1.2 kW and a super-capacitor through a DC/DC hybrid converter. A fuel cell has been proposed as a primary source of energy, and a super-capacitor has been proposed as an auxiliary source of energy. Experimental validation of the system implemented in the laboratory is provided. Several tests have been performed to verify that the system achieves excellent output voltage (V-0) regulation and super-capacitor voltage (V-SC) control under disturbances from fuel cell power (P-FC) and output power (P-0) as well as other perturbations described in analysis results., Postprint (published version)

PEMFCs are the most popular type of Fuel Cells (FCs) and traditionally use hydrogen as the fuel. One FC problem is its relative slow dynamics caused by the time constant of the hydrogen and oxygen supply systems that can be in the range of several seconds. In this sense, supercapacitors (SCs) respond faster than FC to a fast increase or decrease in power demand. Thus, using SCs together with FCs improves FC life and performance by absorbing faster load changes and preventing fuel starvation of the FC. Therefore, it becomes necessary to study structures of power conditioners with their respective control systems that can mitigate the disadvantages mentioned of the FC itself. Several researches have studied the different topologies with their respective control proposals to operate FC and SC. This thesis proposes a digital control scheme to operate a PEMFC module of 1.2 kW and a SC through a DC/DC hybrid converter. A FC has been proposed as a primary source of energy and a SC has been proposed as an auxiliary source of energy. An experimental validation of the system implemented in the laboratory is provided. Several tests have been performed to verify that the system achieves an excellent output voltage (V0) regulation and SC Voltage (VSC) control, under disturbances from FC power (PFC) and output power (P0) as well as other perturbations described in analysis results., Postprint (published version)

The global trends nowadays in the power generation industry are to supplement the electricity production using distributed generation (DG) technologies based on renewable energy resources such as photovoltaic, wind power, etc. However, failure to properly control the operation of distributed energy resources as they connect to the exiting power grid could provoke many power quality problems on the grid side. For this reason, due considerations must be given to power generation and safe running before DG units is actually integrated into the power grid. The main aim of this paper is to address the grid interconnection issues that usually arise as DG units connect to the electric grid. The proposed strategy, implemented in Matlab/Simulink environment in different operating scenarios, provides compensation for active, reactive, unbalanced, and harmonic current components of grid-connected nonlinear unbalanced loads. The simulation results obtained in this study demonstrate the level of accuracy of the proposed technique, which ensure a balance in the overall grid phase currents, injection of maximum available power from DG resources to the grid, improvement of the utility grid power factor, and a reduction in the total harmonic distortion of grid currents., Postprint (published version)

This paper presents a new control strategy to operate a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) 1,2 kW and supercapacitor (SC) through a hybrid converter proposed. The Fuel Cell (FC) has a slow dynamic device by its nature; therefore it is recommended to have an additional auxiliary power such as the SC to improve system performance in all its applications. So has been made a study of the DC/DC converters as well as control strategies employed recently used to operate the FC and SC system. This paper shows an experimental validation of the system which has been simulated in Matlab-Simulink. For this two test have been proposed using different load demands of power and cut off FC power. Under disturbances from FC voltage and load voltage these tests are possible to verify that the system achieves an excellent output voltage (Vo) regulation and SC Voltage (VSC) control., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)