Energy control strategies for the Fuel Cell Hybrid Power Source under unknown load profile

• A load-following control that operates the battery in charge-sustained mode.
• A real-time maximum efficiency point tracking control that saves the hydrogen fuel.
• A comparative study of four new strategies to control the fueling rates of the FC stack.
• An efficient energy management strategy for FCHPS under unknown drive cycle.
• 12% increase in FC net power in comparison with the static feed-forward strategy.

Four new energy control strategies are proposed here for the Fuel Cell Hybrid Power Source (FCHPS) used in stationary and mobile FC application (such as the FC backup source for a smart-house and FC vehicle, respectively) based on the Load Following (LF) control and Maximum Efficiency Point Tracking (MEPT) control of the fueling rates. The LF control approach is used to design simple strategies of the Energy Management Unit (EMU) that will assure a charge-sustaining mode for the batteries stack of the Energy Storage System (ESS). If a fueling rate is controlled based on the LF strategy, then the other is controlled based on MEPT strategy in order to maximize the FC net power available. The advantages of the proposed EMU strategies during an unknown load cycle are comparatively shown.