Pemfc energized high step up converters for induction motor drive

Abstract

Renewable energy resources are slowly replacing fossil fuels in all the applications. Though there are various renewable energy resources available for transportation and static power generation, the fuel cell technology is growing up fast nowadays. Among the types of fuel cells, PEM fuel cell is mostly used due to its salient features like efficient, low operating temperature, newlinehigh energy density, quick start up and compact in size. Since its output voltage depends on operating parameters like temperature, fuel pressure, air pressure, membrane water content etc.., it is essential to adopt an optimum power controller to extract maximum power from PEM fuel cell irrespective of varying operating condition. The output voltage of PEM fuel cell must be regulated with the help of DC-DC converter before it is fed to end applications. It is better to newlineuse DC-DC converter with soft switching capability to improve voltage conversion ratio and power conversion efficiency. To use the PEM fuel cell output power for AC load, it is essential to use an inverter with advanced PWM techniques to supply high quality AC power to the load.To address the above necessities, an induction motor drive system fedfrom 1.26kW PEM fuel cell is proposed in this research work. The proposedsystem consists of Resonant PWM High Step up Converter (RPHS) andInterleaved Resonant PWM High Step up Converter (IRPHS). Both theconverters are assured to trigger at ZVS condition to have reduced switching losses and improve over all conversion efficiency. The RPHS converter switches are triggered based on duty cycle generated using a variable step size FLC based MPPT controller during dynamic temperature condition. The power tracing ability of variable step size FLC based MPPT controller is compared with conventional IC, PandO controllers. The IRPHS converter switches are triggered using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based MPPT controller during dynamic newlinetemperature condition. The power tracking efficacy of ANN based MPPT controller is compared with a variable