An energy efficient and environment friendly elevator system using ultracapacitor and fuel cell with power factor correction

This paper proposes a reliable, energy efficient and high power quality elevator system. The proposed elevator system consists of an ultra-capacitor (UC), a fuel cell (FC) and a power factor correction (PFC) circuit. A novel technique for relieving the power grid from supplying the starting inrush current is proposed. Fuel cell is used for the ride-through operation. Ultra-capacitor bank is used for storing the regenerated energy, which makes the elevator energy efficient, as well as for providing the transient power demand of the system. The proposed system has been simulated using MATLAB/simulink software and the simulation results are presented in the paper.