Performance study of grid connected fuel cell based distributed generation system with ultracapacitor

Abstract

Fuel cell based power generation is becoming one of the promising distributed generation system Fuel cell system can generate power as long as fuel is supplied However fuel cells cannot respond quickly to sudden load change due to slow dynamic response. Hence energy storage system is required during transient period In this paper a grid connected fuel cell system performance is studied considering the ultracapacitor as energy storage device. To interface ultracapacitor with fuel cell bidirectional converter is used Simulation results presented here show that the bidirectional converter effectively controls power flow from ultracapacitor. The dynamic responses of the fuel cell system under different load conditions are presented The results presented in this paper demonstrate the load transient mitigation capability of ultracapcitor. � 2011 IEEE.