Real-Time Control Strategy of Fuel Cell and Battery System for Electric Hybrid Boat Application

Abstract

In this paper, an effective control strategy is proposed to manage energy distribution from fuel cells and batteries for hybrid electric boat applications. The main objectives of this real-time control are to obtain fast current tracking for the batteries’ system, the DC bus voltage stability by using a fuel cell, and energy load distribution for a hybrid electric boat under varying demand conditions. The proposed control strategy is based on a combination of frequency approach and current/voltage control of interleaved boost converters to reduce the hydrogen consumption by the fuel cell and improve the quality of energy transfer. The frequency approach was dedicated to managing the DC power-sharing between the load, the fuel cell, and the batteries’ storage system by extracting the power references. The closed loop control system utilized to control the energy is based on the DC/DC converters. The performance evaluation of the proposed control strategy has been tested through a real-time experimental test bench based on a dSPACE board (DS1104).