A

PRESENTATION ON
DISTRIBUTED POWER GENERATION
USING FUEL CELLS
-FULFILLING THE NEED FOR TRANSIENT MITIGATION

BY

RAGHAVENDRA RAO .A DANNY PAVAN KUMAR.P

IV B.TECH EEE IV B.TECH EEE
E-mail:raghava_2507@yahoo.co.in dannypavankumar@yahoo.co.in
N.B.K.R. INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY

ABSTRACT
You may have heard a lot recently about fuel
cells. According to many news reports, we
may soon be using the new energy-saving
technology to generate electrical power for
our homes and cars. The technology is
extremely interesting to people in all walks of
life because it offers a means of making power
more efficiently and with less pollution. But
how does it do this?
If you want to be technical about it, a fuel cell
is an electrochemical energy conversion
device. A fuel cell converts the chemicals
hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the
process it produces electricity.
technologies. This is the type of fuel cell that
will end up powering cars, buses and maybe
even your house. The PEMFC uses one of the
simplest reactions of any fuel cell. First, let's
take a look at what's in a PEM fuel cell:
Here, we'll take a quick look at each of the
existing or emerging fuel-cell technologies.
We'll detail how one of the most promising
technologies works, and we'll discuss the
DISTRIBUTED POWER GENERATION
Using FUEL CELLS and to mitigate load
transients.

The fuel cell will compete with many other

types of energy conversion devices, including
the gas turbine in your city's power plant, the
gasoline engine in your car and the battery in
your laptop. Combustion engines like the
turbine and the gasoline engine burn fuels and
use the pressure created by the expansion of
the gases to do mechanical work. Batteries
converted chemical energy back into electrical
energy when needed. Fuel cells should do
both tasks more efficiently.
There are several different types of fuel cells,
each using a different chemistry. Fuel cells are
usually classified by the type of electrolyte
they use. Some types of fuel cells work well
for use in stationary power generation plants.
Others may be useful for small portable
applications or for powering cars.

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell

(PEMFC) is one of the most promising

INTRODUCTION:
FUEL CELLS ARE STATIC ENERGY
CONVERSION DEVICES that convert the
chemical energy of fuel into electrical energy
directly. Compared with conventional power
generation systems ,they may have
advantages such as high efficiency, zero or
low emission(pollutant gases),and flexible
modular structure. Fuel cells are expected to
play an important role in future distributed
generation (DG) applications. Fuel cell DGs
(FCGDs) can either be connected to a utility
grid for network reinforcement or installed in
a remote area to supply stand-alone power.
Fuel cells are a low-emission technology that
electro-chemically convert a variety of fossil
and bio-fuels or hydrogen into electricity and
are suitable for transportation and modular
distributed generation applications. Fuel cells
are a key technology for the attainment of
broad hydrogen energy systems deployment,
which is seen as a long term solution to
environmental problems including CC and
general air pollution especially from
transportation. “Fuelled with pure hydrogen,
[fuel cells] produce zero emissions of carbon
dioxide, oxides of nitrogen or any other
pollutant. Even if fuelled with fossil fuels as a
source of hydrogen, noxious emissions are
orders of magnitude below those for
conventional equipment. They offer
significant improvements in energy efficiency
as they remove the intermediate step of
combustion and mechanical devices such as
turbines and pistons. Unlike conventional
systems, they operate at high efficiency at part
load. Also, unlike conventional plants, their
high efficiency is not compromised by small
sizes. High efficiency saves fuel and reduces
CO2 emissions”.
Fuel cells have been in common use for very
specialized applications such as space vehicles
but it is evidence that this technology is
approaching much broader market
viability in competition with conventional
energy conversion technologies. In distributed
power generation applications fuelled by
natural gas, net savings to the consumer on
energy services of 15% are projected. Dual
energy supply grids can be avoided which is
most important for dispersed energy loads.
Technically speaking a fuel cell is an
electrochemical energy conversion device. A
fuel cell converts the chemicals hydrogen and
oxygen into water, and in the process it
produces electricity.
The other electrochemical device that we are
all familiar with is the battery. A battery has
all of its chemicals stored inside, and it
converts those chemicals into electricity too.
This means that a battery eventually "goes
dead" and you either throw it away or
recharge it.
With a fuel cell, chemicals constantly flow
into the cell so it never goes dead -- as long as
there is a flow of chemicals into the cell, the
electricity flows out of the cell. Most fuel cells
in use today use hydrogen and oxygen as the
chemicals.

Chemical Reaction that undergo

in a FUEL CELL:

The anode, the negative post of the

fuel cell, has several jobs. It conducts
Chemistry the electrons that are freed from the
hydrogen molecules so that they can be
of a Fuel Cell used in an external circuit. It has
Anode side:
2H2 => 4H+ + 4e- channels etched into it that disperse the
hydrogen gas equally over the surface of
Cathode side: the catalyst.
O + 4H + 4e => 2H O
2
+ -
2 The cathode, the positive post of the
fuel cell, has channels etched into it that
Net reaction:
distribute the oxygen to the surface of
2H + O => 2H O
2 2 2
the catalyst. It also conducts the
electrons back from the external circuit
to the catalyst, where they can
recombine with the hydrogen ions and
oxygen to form water.
The electrolyte is the proton
exchange membrane. This specially
treated material, which looks something
like ordinary kitchen plastic wrap, only
conducts positively charged ions. The
membrane blocks electrons.
The catalyst is a special material that
facilitates the reaction of oxygen and
hydrogen. It is usually made of platinum
powder very thinly coated onto carbon
paper or cloth. The catalyst is rough and
porous so that the maximum surface
area of the platinum can be exposed to
the hydrogen or oxygen. The platinum-
coated side of the catalyst faces the
PEM.
This reaction in a single fuel cell produces
only about 0.7 volts. To get this voltage up
to a reasonable level, many separate fuel
cells must be combined to form a fuel-cell
stack.
PEMFCs operate at a fairly low temperature
(about 176 degrees Fahrenheit, 80 degrees
Celsius), which means they warm up
quickly and don't require expensive
containment structures. Constant
improvements in the engineering and
materials used in these cells have
increased the power density to a level
where a device about the size of a small
piece of luggage can power a car.

CONSTRUCTION OF A
PEM FUEL CELL AND
HOW IT WORKS
There are several kinds of fuel cells, but Polymer
Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells—also
called Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells—are
the type typically used in automobiles. A PEM fuel
cell uses hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to
produce electricity.

The diagram below shows how these fuel

cells work
Due to the lack of sufficient power
produced in a single fuel cell, we need to
connect into a group. This group of fuel
cells is called a stack .

Sometimes depending upon the need we use
fuel cells of different capacities to have larger
power.
The above fig shows the 5KW range fuel cell
This fig shows the 15KW range fuel cell
Normally the fuel used in the fuel cell is
hydrogen or methanol
If the fuel cell is powered with pure
hydrogen, it has the potential to be up to 80-
percent efficient. That is, it converts 80
percent of the energy content of the
hydrogen into electrical energy. Hydrogen is
difficult to store in a car. When we add a
reformer to convert methanol to hydrogen,
the overall efficiency drops to about 30 to
40 percent.
We still need to convert the electrical
energy into mechanical work. This is
accomplished by the electric motor and
inverter. A reasonable number for the
efficiency of the motor/inverter is about 80
percent. So we have 30- to 40-percent
efficiency at converting methanol to
electricity, and 80-percent efficiency
converting electricity to mechanical power.
That gives an overall efficiency of about 24
to 32 percent. This is the one of the main
drawbacks of the fuel cell usage. But in the
modern day usage the efficiency of the fuel
cell is increased to some extent.
Some applications of fuel cells are as given
below
.Energy supply systems in which
electricity will be produced using the fuel
cells. In near future we may expect a
power generating station of high capacity
using fuel cells
.Massive application of PEM fuel cells as
the basis for a renewable hydrogen-based
energy economy is a leading concept for
meeting global energy needs," said
Stamenkovic.
. Since the only byproduct of PEM fuel
cell exploitation is water vapor, their
widespread use should have a
tremendously beneficial impact on
greenhouse gas emissions and global
warming.
• Stationary power
installations for utilities, factories,
emergency power for hospitals,
communications facilities, credit
card centres, police stations,
banks and computer installations
• Diverse military applications.
Fuel cells has been used by US
navy since 1980.
• Domestic power supplies for
individual residences
• Mobile phones, laptop
computers and other personal
electronic devices
• Transportation - particularly
cars and buses but also in boats,
trains, planes, scooters and
bicycles, as well as highway road
signs. The expected model
designed with fuel cell may
provide a speed of 60 kmph and
can cover a distance of 200kms.
• Portable power for building
sites, camping and vending
machines.
• These fuel cells may be
used in vehicles to reduce the
fuel consumption.
• Landfills and waste water
treatment plants (which are using
fuel cells to convert the methane
gas they produce into electricity
FUEL CELLS IN
DISTRIBUTED POWER
GENERATION:
Among different types of fuel cells,
proton exchange fuel cells(PEMFCs),
solid oxide fuel cells(SOFCs),and molten
carbonate fuel cells(MCFCs) show great
potential in DG applications. They are
good energy sources to provide reliable
power at steady state, but they cannot
respond to electrical load transients as
fast as desired. This is mainly due to their
slow internal electrochemical and thermal
dynamic characteristics. Load transients
can cause low-reactant condition inside
the fuel cells, which is considered to be
harmful to them and will shorten their life.
Therefore, there is a need to combine
mitigate load transients from affecting
FCDGs. Fuel cells can be combined with
fast dynamics, such as battery or super-
capacitor, to form hybrid power plants.
In this paper, a load transient mitigation
controller is described for hybrid PEMFC-
battery power generation systems. The
hybrid FCDG is controlled in a way that
during a load transient ,the fuel cell
provides the steady –state part of the
load. The proposed technique can be
especially used in fuel cell
vehicles(motor starting and accelerating)
as well as in stationary applications,
where load transients are load transient
mitigation controller is applicable to other
types of FCDGs
One of the most important fuel cells used
now-a-days are PEMFCs. The electrical
model of a fuel cell is shown in fig 1 below
which represents the electrochemical and
thermodynamic phenomena inside the
PEMFC. This model is validated with
experimental data measured from an
Avista Labs (now ReliOn) SR-12 500W
PEMFC stack.
 curve(ohmic loss), and the concentration
In fig 1 , E is equivalent internal potential loss, which is a sharp voltage drop in the
and E’ is the standard reference potential high current regions. Operation of fuel
of PEMFC stack at standard state (298K cells in the concentration zone is not
and 1 atm pressure). A current-and recommended, as it leads to sharply
temperature –dependant voltage source, reduced terminal voltage and generated
f(I,T), gives the potential difference due to power.
chemical reactant variations and fuel and
oxidant delay. A temperature-dependant
voltage source, V(act1), is a part of the
activation voltage drop. The
corresponding equivalent resistnces of
activation, concentration and ohmic
voltage drops inside the PEMFC stack are
R(act), R(conc), and R(ohm) ,
respectively. These resistors are current
and/or temperature dependent. The
thermodynamic block in figure simulates
the thermal dynamic property inside the
fuel cell stack. There are four inputs to the
thermodynamic block, the
surrounding(environmental) temperature
T(room), fuel cell output current and
voltage, and the
Fig 2:Simulated and experimental steady-
state response of PEMFC.

Fig 1: Electrical circuit model of PEMFC
Internal potential of PEMFC(E). The
output quantity of this block is the PEMFC
stack internal temperature.
Fig 2 shows the simulated steady-state
terminal(V-I) characteristic curve of a
500W PEMFC stack model compared
with the experimental data.. This
characteristic curve is divided into 3
regions. The voltage drop associated with
low currents(activation loss) that is
associated with linear part of the
BATTERY MODEL:
Fig 3 shows a simplified electrical circuit
model for lead-acid batteries, which is
obtained from a more complicated
validated electrical circuit model. The
model parameters (capacitances and
resistances),described below, are the
functions of battery current , temperature ,
and state of charge (SOC).
C1=over voltage capacitance
Cb=battery Capacitance
R1=over voltage resistance for charge
and discharge
R2=internal resistance for charge and
discharge
Rp=self-discharge resistance, or
insulation resistance.
Fig3: Simplified circuit model for lead-acid
batteries
THE CONTROL
STRATEGY:
Fig 4 shows the schematic diagram for
the proposed PEMFC-battery power
generation system, where a boost dc/dc
converter is used to adapt the PEMFC
output voltage to the battery voltage,
220V. Load mitigation is investigated for a
2kW PEMFC stack, which consists of four
500W PEMFC stacks connected in series.
The system load can either be ac or
dc(interfaced through an inverter).
LOAD MITIGATION
CONTROL:
Load mitigation control is achieved
through a current controller for the dc/dc
converter. This strategy is adopted based
on the well-documented fact that the fuel
cells are good energy sources(for
providing steady-state power ), but not
good sources for supplying transient
power. The purpose of the controller is to
control the fuel cell stack to supply steady
the transient power to the load.
Fig 4: Schematic diagram of a hybrid
PEMFC-battery system with load transient
mitigation control.
The main component of the load transient
mitigation control is a low-pass filter,
through which high-frequency
components of load transients are filtered
out. The filtered load current signal , I(ref)
is then used as reference signal for the
current controller, which controls the dc/dc
converter i(dd_out) is compared with the
reference signal I(ref), and the error signal
is fed to a proportional-integral(PI) current
controller to control the duty ratio of the
converter switch.
FILTER DESIGN:
As mentioned previously ,a properly
designed low-loss filter is needed to filter
out the high-frequency components of
load current transients .The choice of the
low-pass filter is a tradeoff design
between the storage capacity of the
battery used and the smooth response of
the fuel cell to load transients . Figure 5
shows an example of the responses of
different second-order low-pass filters to a
load current transient(also shown in the
figure) .
Figure 5- Response of different low-pass
filters to a load current transient
The damping factor of filters are all set to
one to avoid oscillation .It is clear from the
figure that the higher the cutoff frequency
of the filter ,the shorter the settling time of
the response .A filter with shorter settling
time requires smaller storage battery
capacity ,but may cause undesired
overshoot .On the other hand ,the lower
the filter cutoff frequency, the longer the
rise time of the filter response and the
smoother the fuel cell response .However,
a larger battery capacity is needed if a
lower cutoff frequency is chosen for the
filter .Therefore ,a tradeoff has to be made
to choose a proper filter based on the
information available about the load .As a
rule ,the filter should be designed to
accommodate the fastest load transients
with the highest possible cutoff frequency.
According to the literature, transient
frequency components higher than
1250 Hz can be neglected since they do
not affect the fuel cell performance
significantly.
DC LOAD TRANSIENTS:
The load current transient of a
2.5 HP/220 V dc motor, starting in three
voltage steps, is shown in figure 6.
Figure 6: Load transient of starting a
2.5 Hp 220V dc motor
.
This load current is applied to the hybrid
PEMFC-battery system shown in Figure 4
The cutoff frequency and the damping
factor of the low pass filter were set at 0.1
Hz and 1, respectively. The corresponding
current reference signal I( ref), the battery
current I(b), and the converter output
current I (dd_out) responding to the dc
motor load current are shown in figure 7.It
is clear from this figure that the converter
current I (dd_out)
Follows the reference signal I(ref) very
well; they almost overlap each other. It is
clear from the figure that the battery picks
up the transient current while the
converter output current rises smoothly
from its original steady state to its new
steady-state value. The PEMFC current
and voltage responses to the dc motor
load transient are shown in figure 8.It is
again clear that the PEMFC outputs vary
smoothly during the load transient, as the
PEMFC is controlled to supply steady
state current to the load while the battery
picks up the load transients.
 converter,which are well within their
acceptable ranges.
AC LOAD TRANSIENTS:
An ac load transients was also applied to
the PEMFC power generation system,
shown in Figure 4, to show the
effectiveness of the load transients
mitigation technique. The ac load
transients used is shown in figure 9;

Figure 7 : Reference signal I(ref),battery

current I(b) , and converter output current
I(dd_out) under the load transients for
PEMFC .
In figure 8 the PEMFC voltage response
is shown for the same dc motor load
transient when only a voltage controller
is used for dc/dc converter(figure 4)
without using the current controller.

FIGURE 9 : Ac load transient used on

PEMFC-battery system.

it has a frequency of 60 Hz.

Figure 8: The PEMFC output current and

voltage responses to the dc motor load
transients.

In this case,the PEMFC current and

voltage ripples shown in the responses
given in Figure 8 are due to the high-
frequency switching devices in the
Figure 10 : The control reference signal
I(ref) and battery current I(b) under the
ac load transient for PEMFC.

Figure 10 shows the reference signal

I(ref) and the battery output current. It is
clear from this figure that the battery picks
up transient load, while the reference
current for PEMFC moves smoothly to a
new point. As a result , the PEMFC
current and voltage, shown in figure 11,
moves smoothly from their original
operating point to their new operating
point .
Figure 11: Output current and voltage
responses of PEMFC to ac load transient.
CONCLUSION: Even though
there are so many sources of producing
power, generation with fuel cells is easier
and there will be less cost per unit of
generation. Thus using fuel cells
(especially PEMFC) the power can be
supplied by minimizing the cost to a large
extent. By following the measures above
i.e., producing the power with fuel cells by
overcoming the transient problems with
the help of batteries or super capacitors,
we hope the increase in number of power
generating stations using fuel cells.
Thus keeping in mind the various
advantages of fuel cells given above we
may expect the rapid growth in usage of
fuel cells in various fields to have much
better and most comfortable life.

In summary, smooth transition of FCDG

systems from one operating point to the
next is essential for their improved
reliability and durability. This requirement
can be achieved for both dc and ac loads
through low-pass filtering of load
transients and a properly designed fuel
cell current controller.