An investigation on combined operation of five-level shunt active power filter with PEM fuel cell

Abstract

In this paper, a proton exchange membrane PEM fuel cell power plant is used to improve the filtering performance of the conventional active power filter, as well as simultaneously contribute with the electric grid to supply the power to the load. The five-level inverter is used as a shunt active power filter, taking advantages of the multilevel inverter such as low harmonic distortion and reduced switching losses. It is capable of compensating power factor, current harmonics and can also make the interface between renewable energy sources and the electric grid, injecting the energy generated by PEM fuel cell to the load. The active power filter control strategy is based on the use of self tuning filters for reference current generation and a fuzzy logic current controller. The MATLAB Fuzzy Logic Toolbox is used for implementing the fuzzy logic control algorithm. The obtained results show that the PEM fuel cell contributes successfully to supply simultaneously the load with the electric grid and produced a sinusoidal supply current with low harmonic distortion and in phase with the line voltage.