Military Fuel Cell-Based Vehicles: Modular Power DC-DC Converter System

Abstract

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have attracted researchers’ attention to further develop and enhance this strategic area. Compared to fuel-based vehicles, EVs are more in demand nowadays due to their high performance and modern features. Integrating renewable energy sources such as PV and fuel cells to EVs expands this technology’s research area to increase system reliability. Fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) introduce more challenges to the researchers to integrate this type of renewable energy source to charge the EV battery while driving. In this paper, design and control of a modular DC-DC converter for fuel-cell based EVs has been studied. A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique is used to extract the FC’s maximum power. Since the FC produces a relatively low voltage, a high gain DC-DC converter is required to step up the voltage to the battery’s rated voltage. This can be achieved through an input-parallel output-series Cuk-based DC-DC converter. The system small-signal model and control are presented to ensure equal current sharing at the input side while maintaining equal output voltage sharing even with a mismatch in the system module. The presented concept has been elucidated through simulation using Matlab/Simulink platform.