A new green power inverter for fuel cells

Abstract

This paper presents a new grid connected inverter for fuel cells. It consists of a two stage power conversion topology. Since the fuel cell operates with a low voltage in a wide voltage range (25 V-45 V) this voltage must be transformed to around 350-400 V in order to invert this DC power into AC power to the grid. The proposed converter consists of an isolated DC-DC converter cascaded with a single phase H-bridge inverter. The DC-DC converter is a current-fed push-pull converter. A new dedicated voltage mode startup procedure has been developed in order to limit the inrush current during startup. The inverter is controlled as a power factor controller with resistor emulation. Experimental results of converter efficiency, grid performance and fuel cell response are shown for a 1 kW prototype. The proposed converter exhibits a high efficiency in a wide power range (higher than 92%) and the inverter operates with a near unity power factor and a low current THD.