Pre-Sizing Approach of a Fuel Cell-Battery Hybrid Power System with Interleaved Converters

Abstract

This paper proposes a design methodology that is dedicated to improving the concept of a modular hybrid power chain that uses interleaved converters. The approach involves optimising the system under multi-physical constraints, where the number of cells in the interleaved converters is considered as a key modular parameter. The methodology uses analytical models to strike a balance between computation time and result accuracy. This compromise is indispensable to the construction of a smart design approach under multi-physical constraints, such as electric, efficiency, volume, and thermal constraints. The proposed approach has been applied to a hybrid fuel cell and battery power system for automotive applications; the goal is to obtain a global optimal architecture chain by optimising the number of interleaved converter cells and by determining appropriate power electronics components and the optimal sizing of sources. This constitutes the primary step for providing an effective pre-design support tool for considering architecture modularity, facilitating the use of new technologies in the early design stage. The results showed that the interleaving concept allows for better flexibility in respecting the design constraints to improve the design of hybrid power systems. The analysis also highlights the current limitations and performance of the optimisation method and suggests new areas for future work.