TS-Fuzzy Controllers based Novel Control of Grid Connected Fuel Cell Stack System

¹ Electrical & Electronics Engineering Technology Department, Royal Commission Yanbu Colleges & Institutes, Yanbu Industrial City 46452, Saudi Arabia .
² Director, ERG Foundation and CPGC PVT. LTD, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India .

^* Corresponding Author: mallasivaganesh@gmail.com

Abstract

Energy storage and utilization-based systems are playing a vital role in power systems. Hydrogen energy based electrical power generation systems are most popular nowadays due to their ability to meet the load demand without any noise, or pollution. Usually, Fuel Cell Stacks (FCSs) are used to produce electricity from hydrogen and oxygen. Utility grid connected FCs can able to meet load demand quickly as well as improve the power quality at local load bus. Since the FC output is DC, an inverter with an efferent control technique is required to interface the FCs into the AC utility grid. The loads connected at the point of common coupling (PCC) of the FCs to the grid are varying randomly and in terms of their nonlinear and reactive power characteristics. These kinds of loads will affect the power system significantly and result in poor power quality at PCC. Proportional-integral (PI) controllers often cannot operate at their maximal efficiency when the system experiences random fluctuations in addition to the nonlinearities caused by the loads and the power electronic switches used to connect the FC to the grid. This is because these controllers have fixed gains.. One of the most effective solutions to get around these problems associated with using the fixed gain PI controller parameters is to use some adaptive controllers, such as Takagi-Sugeno (TS) Fuzzy controllers. Consequently, a novel control strategy for the inverter is suggested in this paper with the aid of TS-Fuzzy controllers in order to improve the power quality at PCC. Therefore, a novel control strategy for the inverter is suggested in this paper with the aid of TS-Fuzzy controllers in order to improve the power quality at PCC.. Hardware – in the – Loop (HIL) is established with the help of OPAL-RT technologies to enhance the significance of the proposed method. In this study, extensive results are provided and analyzed using HIL under different operating conditions to highlight the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in mitigating power quality problems.