A High Voltage Gain Interleaved DC-DC Converter Integrated Fuel Cell for Power Quality Enhancement of Microgrid

Abstract

Fuel cells have drawn a lot of interest in recent years as one of the most promising alternative green power sources in microgrid systems. The operating conditions and the integrated components greatly impact the quality of the fuel cell’s voltage. Energy management techniques are required in this regard to regulate the fuel cell’s power in a microgrid. The active/reactive power in the microgrid should be adjusted in line with US Energy Star’s regulations whereas the grid current needs to follow the standard set by IEEE 519 2014 to enhance the power quality of the electrical energy injected into the microgrid. Uncontrolled energy injection from the fuel cell can have serious impacts including superfluous energy demand, overloading, and power losses, especially in high power and medium voltage systems. Although fuel cells have many advantages, they cannot yet produce high voltages individually to compensate for the demand of a microgrid system. Due to these reasons, the fuel cell must be interfaced with a DC-DC converter. This research proposes a novel high voltage gain converter integrated 1.26 kW fuel cell for microgrid power management that can boost the fuel cell’s voltage up to 20 times. Due to this high voltage gain, the voltage and current ripple of the fuel cell is also reduced substantially. According to the analysis, the proposed converter demonstrated optimal performance when compared to the other converters due to its high voltage gain and extremely low voltage ripple. As a result, the harmonic profile of the microgrid current persists with a reduced THD of 3.22% and a very low voltage ripple of 4 V. To validate the converter’s performance, along with extensive simulation, a hardware prototype was also built. The voltage of the fuel cell is regulated using a simplified proportional integral controller. The operating principle of the converter integrated fuel cell along with its application in microgrid power management is demonstrated. A comparative analysis is also shown to verify how the proposed converter is improving the system’s performance when compared against other converters.