PEM Fuel Cell Powered Multilevel Converter

Abstract

Nowadays, renewable energy sources are becoming further utilized to produce electricity. Fuel cell (FC) is one of the encouraging renewable and sustainable power resources as a result of its high power density and extremely low release. This paper presents suggestion and implementation of FC power system. So as to design a greatly efficient FC power system, proper DC - DC and DC - AC converters are needed. Among the different types of DC - DC converters, Interleaved Boost Converter (IBC) has been proposed as appropriate interface between FC and the next stage to transform the produced power energy (low voltage high current input into a high voltage low current output of the FC). 11-level Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) Multilevel Converter (MLC) is proposed for converting the DC output of the IBC to AC voltage to feed the load. MLC is chosen because it has many attractive features like high voltage capability, smaller or even no output filter, low voltage stress on load. Simulation of the proposed FC power system has been performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK..

Keywords

FC, IBC, and NPC - MLC.