Integration of fuel cell to DC distributed microgrid with dynamic compensation

• Main Author: Navpreet Thukral
• Other Authors: Wang Peng
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/68727
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This thesis represents interface of fuel cell to DC Microgrid with dynamic compensation. The increased importance of microgrids is mainly because of its ability to separate and isolate itself from the utility grid in case of any disturbance, with little or no disruption to the loads. It also encourages the use of renewable energy sources and hence carbon emissions are reduced. Fuel cell is a promising energy source for micro grid. Fuel cell system is a renewable energy system in which hydrogen fuel combines with oxygen to produce electricity. It is environmental friendly and has zero greenhouse emission. The fuel cell stack voltage and generated power varies mainly with fuel flow rate. The front end DC/DC converter is employed to mitigate such variations, stabilize output voltage and control the power flow.n this project, the power electronics interface for fuel cell to DC microgrid is developed. On the basis of the fuel cell characteristics, an appropriate high frequency isolated power electronic converter was selected and designed. The main limitation of fuel cell is its slow dynamic response to the load current transients. This might cause excessive variation of voltage and frequency of the microgrid. Hence, power buffer must be connected and incorporated with the fuel cell stack to provide a better system performance. Therefore, power buffer device was selected and associated power electronic converters were designed in this project. Any fluctuation from the fuel cells will be supplemented by the energy storage system The conceptual designs are developed using PSIM and the performance of the DC/DC converters with control strategies is individually analyzed. Furthermore the overall performance of the integrated system is studied and the simulation results are used to verify the theoretical analysis of a fuel cell based system.