A cost effective inverter topology for fuel cell residential power applications

This paper presents a new climate friendly cost-effective inverter for residential fuel cell applications. Meeting this need was one of the objectives for the 2007 Future Energy Challenge, a contest sponsored by the US Department of Energy, US Department of Defense and the IEEE. The aim of this paper is to design, simulate, and build a scale model of a 5 kVA inverter capable of performing the power conversion process while meeting the aggressive component cost target of $200 US for a 10,000 unit production. The means by which we proposed to build the most efficient and cost effective inverter was by breaking the inverter down into two separate sections. The first section was a full-bridge DC/DC converter, with 200 VDC output, and the second section was a DC/AC converter, with 120 VAC 60 Hz output. The input voltage of the fuel cell is of a range of 42 VDC to 72 VDC. The maximum peak current drawn from the fuel cell is 28 A. A thorough study was undertaken to prove that the two-stage method is the most effective in minimizing component cost. Circuit design, simulation, and experimental results are presented to provide the proof of concept of the presented work.