DESIGN OF FUEL CELL INTEGRATION TO HYBRID RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEM ON HYBRID ENERGY CONTROLLER OPERATION

• Main Author: Maulanal Haq, Muhamad
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/44833
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Hybrid Renewable Energy System (SHET) is microgrid that has operated in Energy Management Laboratory at Labtek-VI TP Rahmat. Its energy demand is full filled by photovoltaic system which is the renewable energy, grid (PLN) as national electricity network, and battery as backup power. In the development stages, SHET needs some renewable resources to supply more power when excessive load or critical condition like low level battery happens. Fuel cell becomes an option to be integrated to SHET. In this final project, design of PEM fuel cell integration to SHET has been conducted. This design connects the fuel cell to the battery system through DC Coupling via MPPT converter. The fuel cell will be operated on Island Mode with some specific load conditions and battery’s SoC level. This makes fuel cell as the last backup energy to avoid system shutdown. From the experiment it is found that this design makes fuel cell produces only 120W to 160W of power from its 1kW potential. It happened because the fuel cell’s characteristic of operating voltage is lower than the 48V voltage of the VRLA battery in SHET, while the MPPT can only operate fuel cell above the battery voltage around 49V-52V. This condition caused the battery remains in discharging mode despite fuel cell has connected to SHET when excessive load happened. Therefore it is necessary to improve the design that can maximize the produced power of the fuel cell.