Regenerative Braking System for Fuel Cell-Battery Hybrid Sources

Abstract

Fuel cell vehicles (FCV) have proven to be efficient and offer a compact, lightweight effective means of transportation that has environmental concerns and is economical with a sufficient life cycle. In this paper a regenerative braking for a FCV with fuel cell-battery hybrid sources is demonstrated. The fuel cell (FC) works as the main source, while the battery serves as a backup. As the output voltage of the FC in FCV is quite low, so power converters with high gain will be required for the power conditioning circuitry for connecting each source to the DC bus, a high gain boost dc-dc converter (HGUC), which can provide extreme voltage gain and reduced voltage stress, with a small number of components is used to connect the FC to the DC link. Similarly a high gain bidirectional dc-dc converter (HGBC) with, semiconductor components under low voltage stress, a constant potential difference between the LV and HV ports’ grounds, synchronous rectification to enhance the efficiency is employed to interface the battery with the dc link. The dc-link voltage is made constant and is used to drive a BLDC motor of 1hP, 310V, and 3000rpm. Regenerative mode of BLDC motor during downhill motion is achieved.