Design and Analysis of a Partial-Power Converter with an Active Power-Buffer for a Fuel Cell-based Hybrid Electric Vehicle

This paper presents a Partial-Power processing architecture for a Fuel Cell-based hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV). Likewise, an active power buffer has been incorporated to supply the power peaks demanded by the vehicle's traction system. The purpose of the Partial-Power architecture has been to improve overall efficiency while semiconductor power losses are reduced relative to the Full-Power converter. This topology has some advantages over the traditional structure, such as high power density, reduced voltage stress in semiconductor devices, small size, or low cost. This is because the Partial-Power converter only processes a fraction of the total system power. The effectiveness of the strategy has been validated by the Matlab/Simulink software simulation. The results obtained, merit figures and conclusions are also presented in this paper.