Standalone power Plant based on PEMFC

The proposed paper describes a standalone three-phase power plant designed on the base of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) as a power source and lead-acid batteries as a storage system. The PEMFC provides the mean power required by the load while the pack of batteries ensures the pick demand and stores the recovered energy. The two sources are connected to a DC bus using two high gain DC-DC boost converters. The control of these converters, in addition to the DC bus regulation and the power management strategy, ensure the satisfaction of the load power demand, increase the PEMFC lifetime, charge the batteries and keep their state of charge (SoC) within an acceptable range. The proposed architecture is validated by a series of tests made on a 1.2 kW experimental prototype with three hours of autonomy.