Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is one of the promising and technologies in coming future for alternative source of power generation. As fuel cells are a source of DC voltage but for many applications AC supply is required and hence inverter circuit fed by a fuel cell is important. Multilevel inverter is a promising topology to generate waveforms close to a sinusoid. Among the multilevel inverter topologies, cascaded multilevel inverter requires the least number of switches and dc sources. The main focus of this paper is to develop an electrical model of the fuel cell supplying a cascade multilevel inverter. The fuel cell stack and reformer model is simulated using MATLAB and the eleven-level inverter output is verified using fuel cell as the power source. Furthermore, to control the power flow of fuel cell system a PID controller is used. Among various modulation strategies, and this paper focuses on the PWM method because it is less complex hence reliable and easy to implement. Simulation results confirmed the high performance of the controller to control power generation. Both the inverter circuit topology and its control scheme are described in detail and their performance is verified based on simulation and results.

Full text: IJEIR_1870_Final.pdf