MPC and MPPT Control of Fuel Cell/Photovoltaic/Supercapacitor Hybrid Grid-Connected System

Abstract

In this paper, we present the control of a hybrid renewable energy system, based on a proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack, a photovoltaic energy subsystem and a supercapacitor storage subsystem. These three subsystems are connected to electrical grid through dc-ac converter. Fuel cell-based systems allow avoiding the intermittence and discontinuous character of several renewable energy resources, such as photovoltaic energy and wind energy. The main drawback of fuel cell stack is its slow dynamics. To overcome this drawback, supercapacitor is used to supply or absorb the power during transient and fault conditions. A model predictive controller is designed in order to achieve the following purposes: extracting maximum power from the fuel cell stack, regulating the dc bus voltage and controlling the active and reactive power of the grid. The control of the hybrid system is simulated using Matlab/Simulink.