An Evaluation of Firefly and Flower Pollination Techniques Used to Harvest Maximum Power from PEMFC

The position of the maximum power point (MPP) on the P-I curves of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is significantly influenced by variations in FC temperature and membrane water content. Accordingly, the utilization of an MPP Tracker is essential in enhancing the energy efficiency of the PEMFC. In this study, the Firefly technique (FF) is introduced to trace the MPP of a PEMFC when the membrane water content and FC temperature change. The PEMFC MPPT model, utilizing the FF technique, is implemented on MATLAB software, and compared to the Flower Pollination (FP) method to verify the performance of the PEMFC stack under various operational circumstances. The simulation results demonstrate that both approaches effectively extracted the optimal power of the PEMFC stack under varying conditions. However, the FF method outperforms the FP approach with its superior tracking speed and reduced power fluctuations around the MPP.