Line-Interactive Transformerless Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) with a Fuel Cell as the Primary Source

Abstract

This paper presents line-interactive transformerless Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) with a fuel cell as the prime energy source. The proposed UPS consists of three major parts (i.e., an output inverter, a unidirectional DC–DC converter, and a battery charger/discharger). Non-isolated topologies of both the unidirectional converter and battery charger/discharger ensure transformerless operation of the UPS system. A new topology of high gain converter is employed for boosting the low voltage of the fuel cell to a higher DC link voltage, with minimum semiconductor count, and high efficiency. A high-gain battery charger/discharger realizes the bidirectional operation between the DC link and the battery bank. Besides, it regulates the DC link voltage during the cold start of fuel cells and keeps the battery bank voltage to only 24 V. A new inverter control scheme is introduced that regulates the output voltage and minimizes the total harmonic distortion for non-linear loading condition. The proposed control scheme integrates proportional-resonant control with slide mode control, which improves the controller’s performance in transient conditions. The proposed UPS system is validated by developing a 1-kVA experimental prototype.

Keywords

• fuel cell
• line-interactive
• uninterruptible power supply
• transformerless
• DC–DC converter