Development and control of an alkaline fuel cell power conditioner

This paper presents the development of a prototype 400 W alkaline fuel cell power conditioner. The power conditioner serves to boost the 4 V DC produced by the fuel cell into 400 V DC suitable for conversion to 230 Vrms AC to power domestic loads. To compensate for the slow transient behaviour of the fuel cell a power flow buffer, incorporating supercapacitor energy storage has been developed which interfaces directly to the 400 V DC bus. The result is a modular system where communication between system blocks is minimal and control is achieved by monitoring the 400 V DC bus. Experimental measurements from the prototype system illustrate the performance of the system during load transient conditions. Several practical design issues of the power electronic converters designed to operate with high voltage transformation ratios are discussed in detail.