Fuel cells with lifting converters for alternative energies

Abstract

The need for energy in the world has led to the search for new ways of electric power generation, among which is the use of fuel cells as a renewable source that does not contribute to environmental pollution and has high efficiency in energy conversion. In this type of technology the system suffers voltage fluctuations due to the connected loads. Booster converters of boost type are used, which allow to regulate the tension to an optimal value, without great fluctuations. We chose the design of the PI type control by means of the state space method to obtain the transfer functions, and the Routh-Hurwitz criterion to obtain the constants of the PI controller. A fuel cell system of 1 kW was simulated keeping the regulator output voltage at 48 V constant with an overvoltage not greater than 30% of the desired value.

Keywords

• fuel cell
• simulation
• pi controller
• boost converter.