Performance Evaluation of Fuel Cell/Battery/Supercapacitor Hybrid Power Source for Vehicle Applications

Abstract

This paper proposes a high-power high-energy dc distributed generation system supplied by a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) as a main power source and storage devices: battery and supercapacitor, for future fuel cell vehicle applications. The energy in hybrid system is balanced by the dc bus voltage regulation. The principle is based on frequency approach that the FC dynamics are limited to avoid fuel starvation problems and the battery dynamics are also limited to reduce its stress. As a result, the hybrid power source will increase its lifetime. To authenticate the proposed control algorithm, a hardware system in our laboratory is realized by analog circuits and numerical calculation by dSPACE. Experimental results with small-scale devices (a PEMFC: 500- W, 50-A; a battery bank: 68-Ah, 24-V; and a supercapacitor bank: 292-F, 30-V, 500-A) corroborate the excellent control principle during motor drive cycle.