Power management control strategy for a stand-alone solar photovoltaic-fuel cell–battery hybrid system

• Models of individual controllers for PV, FC and electrolyzer are simulated.
• PV and FC are operated at maximum power point.
• PV-battery controller maintains the battery current below the maximum charging rate.
• The need for a dump load is eliminated.
• The frequent start/stop cycle for FC and electrolyzer is minimized.

Hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) help to increase system reliability and improve power quality. However, they face certain challenges in their widespread deployment such as intermittently varying renewable energy (RE) sources like solar radiation and wind speed, high installation costs and limited lifetime of energy storage devices. Thus, there is a need to integrate these sources by means of a suitable power management strategy (PMS) despite the fluctuations in source and load power. This paper aims to formulate a PMS to integrate the power output from solar photovoltaic (PV) array, fuel cell (FC) stack and battery with a provision for onsite hydrogen (H2) generation by means of an electrolyzer and H2 tank. The control strategy handles the source power effectively by considering the limited lifecycle of storage devices. It also eliminates the need for a dump load in the system by matching the source power with load demand when the storage devices are charged to their maximum capacity.