A novel FPGA fuel cell system controller design

This paper presents the research carried out in the area of holistic modeling of renewable energy systems. The goal was to examine the possibility of using field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) for the rapid prototyping of a PI+PWM digital electronic controller used in a power system consisting of a 2.5kW fuel cell stack (FCS) and a buck converter. Initially, the system was simulated using Matlab / Simulink / SimPowerSystem toolbox to create a reference for comparison. Later on, the model was successfully developed in Handel-C, following a new approach that allows the holistic functional simulation of the system to be performed in the same environment as its controller hardware implementation and timing analysis, using the DK4 design/modeling environment from Celoxica. The controller design was then downloaded in hardware onto a RC203 development board containing a Virtex II Xilinx FPGA and was successfully tested experimentally. A real fuel cell power system can be connected directly to the newly designed FPGA controller.