An Overview of Various DC-DC Converter Techniques used for Fuel Cell based Applications

Abstract

Fuel cells are becoming attractive energy sources for numerous applications like electric vehicle and hybrid energy systems because they do not discharge any pollutants and their output is independent of the environmental conditions unlike PV cell and wind energy plants. Typical output voltage of a fuel cell is 0.6V - 0.7V, hence dc to dc boost converter is used for stepping-up and for controlling the output voltage of fuel cell, while interleaving is done to reduce input current ripple. Bidirectional dc to dc converter is applied for the interfacing of various storage devices like batteries which provide power during peak demand. Thus, interleaved dc to dc converters and bidirectional dc to dc converters are getting more and more attention in academic research and in industrial applications. Therefore, this paper discusses 2-ø, 3-ø, 4-ø and 6-ø interleaved dc to dc converter and numerous topologies of bidirectional dc to dc converters researched in recent years.