| With the rapid continuation of global warming, high concentrations of pollutants, and foreign oil conflicts, the green energy push has now begun to manifest into great advancements in renewable or clean energies. Fuel-cells have a promising future for mobile power such as the automotive industry, distributed generation, and portable auxiliary power supplies. The type of fuel-cell that has the most focus today is the hydrogen Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel-cell. It is widely accepted that a fuel-cell cannot effectively supply a dynamic load on its own. In order to correct this drawback and make the fuel-cell system useful for all occasions, a hybrid FC/storage device system needs to be implemented. In this type of system, a balance is created between the high-energy fuel-cell and the high-power storage devices.;In this thesis, a hybrid fuel-cell system topology favorable for use in a "personal" electric vehicle such as a scooter is proposed. This topology consists of a fuel-cell connected directly to the batteries and load via a DC link converter. The converter is used to manage the flow of power within the system. In order to have this flow of power to be stable and within operational limits of the devices, a novel adaptive control algorithm implementing six transfer functions based on six major operating conditions is developed.;The development of the adaptive algorithm and the implementation of hardware tests were carried out by Matlab/Simulink and dSPACE. The results of the tests showed that the control algorithm was successful at regulating power flow as well as facilitating DC link stability and accuracy at the major operating points. |
