192 ECTI TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL ENG., ELECTRONICS, AND COMMUNICATIONS VOL.5, NO.

2 August 2007

Control of Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Source

for Electric Vehicle Applications
Phatiphat Thounthong1 , Non-member

ABSTRACT bank) for distributed generation system. After pre-

This paper studies a fuel cell/battery hybrid power senting the proposed structure and control algorithm
source for electric vehicle applications. The fuel cell in section 2, it will illustrate experimental results ob-
is connected to a DC bus by a classical boost con- tained with a small-scale test bench based on a PEM
verter, and the battery bank is directly connected to fuel cell, a lead-acid battery bank, and a DC motor
the DC bus. It presents a control strategy used to with converter drive as a traction drive in electric ve-
control power from the fuel cell, power to the motor, hicle in section 3.
and state-of-charge of the battery. A hardware sys-
tem is realized by analogical circuits for the fuel cell
current loop and numerical calculation in dSPACE
for battery current and state-of-charge loops. Exper-
imental results in the GREEN/INPL laboratory with
a PEM fuel cell (500 W, 40 A, 13 V) and a lead-acid
battery bank (33 Ah, 48 V) point out that the fuel
cell/battery hybrid source can effectively function to
meet the electric vehicle demand. The proposed sys-
tem has achieved an excellent performance. Fig.1: Fuel cell hybrid power source for distributed
generation system. pLoad , pF C and pBat are the load,
Keywords: Batteries, converters, energy storage, fuel cell, and battery powers and vBus is the DC bus
fuel cells, electric vehicles, state-of-charge. voltage.

1. INTRODUCTION
Currently, fuel cells (FCs) are acknowledged as one
of the most promising technologies to meet the fu-
ture power generation requirements. Since fuel cells
directly convert fuel and an oxidant into electricity
through an electrochemical process without pollution
(CO2), they can achieve operating efficiencies 50%
- nearly three times of the efficiency of conventional
internal combustion engines (ICE) [1].
Nonetheless, the important technical limitation of
a fuel cell system is a current (or power) slope of
fuel cell must be limited in order to prevent a fuel
starvation phenomenon [2].
In addition, for vehicle applications, the traction
drive demands high power in a short time (for ex-
ample, vehicle acceleration and deceleration), around
two times of average power during drive cycle [3]. For Fig.2: Power profile of fuel cell hybrid source.
these reasons, some kind of hybridization of fuel cell
with other energy storage devices such as batteries or
supercapacitors will be advantageous as depicted in
2. FUEL CELL/BATTERY HYBRID POWER
Figs. 1 and 2.
SOURCE
This paper presents method on how to function a
main source (fuel cell) and a storage device (battery 2. 1 Configuration of Hybrid Power Source
Fuel cell voltage vF C is highest when no current is
Manuscript received on February 1, 2007 ; revised on May 4,
2007. flowing and drops with increasing current because of
1 The author is with the Department of Teacher Training losses in the stack. At rated current IF CRated , vF C
in Electrical Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Tech- drops to around half of the no-load voltage [4], [5]. On
nology North Bangkok, Email: phtt@kmitnb.ac.th, thoun-
thong@yahoo.com
the other hand, battery voltage curve, for example in
Control of Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Source for Electric Vehicle Applications
Fig.3: Proposed control structure of fuel cell/battery hybrid power source.
a lead-acid battery, is linear over most of its operating
range, however, at the end-of-discharge, the voltage
decreases very rapidly toward to zero [6]-[9].
Many previous works with a battery bank as an
energy storage device have operated by connecting
batteries directly to a DC bus (for example, a DC
bus voltage (battery voltage) of the Honda Hybrid
Insight is 144 V [3]). For these reasons, the proposed
configuration of fuel cell/battery hybrid source, as
depicted in Fig. 3, is that the fuel cell is connected
to the DC bus by a boost converter and the battery
bank is directly connected to the DC bus.
A classical boost converter is selected for a fuel cell
converter studied here, as portrayed in Fig. 4 [10].
Note here that the switch S2 is a shutdown device to
prevent the fuel cell stack from short circuit in case of
the accidental destruction of S1, or of faulty operation
of the regulator [11].
The fuel cell converter is driven, through MOS-
FET S1 gate signal, by means of a pulse width mod-
ulation (PWM) for average current control in contin-
uous conduction mode, in order to obtain a constant
switching frequency of 25 kHz for the fuel cell current.
The used PWM generator is a high-speed PWM gen-
erator UC28025B (Texas Instruments Inc.). More-
over, an analogical Proportional-Integral-Derivative
controller (PID-controller) is chosen for the fuel cell
current controller as shown in Fig. 3 [12].
Fig.4: Fuel cell power conditioning (Converter cir-
cuit) [10].
193
2. 2 Fuel Cell Current Regulation
When a fuel cell system is operated, its fuel flows
are controlled by a ”Fuel Cell Controller” (refer to
Fig. 3) which receives a fuel cell current demand
(reference) iF CREF from the hybrid control algorithm
(automatic operation in this work). The fuel flows
must be adjusted to match the reactant delivery rate
to the usage rate. Then, the inner fuel cell current
control loop is compulsory and the control algorithm
demands energy from the fuel cell to the DC bus by
generating iF CREF , refer to Fig. 3 [13], which is sent
to the ”Fuel Cell Controller” synchronously. For the
fuel cell system considered here, the fuel cell current
demand signal iF CREF is in a linear scale of 50 A/10
V.
One can take advantage of safety and high dynam-
ics of this loop as well; thus, it must be realized by
analogical circuits to function at high bandwidth.
2. 3 Proposed Control Algorithm
To manage energy exchanges between the DC bus,
the main source and the storage device, one may de-
fine three operating modes (or states) [13], refer to
Fig. 2:
• charge mode, in which the main source sup-
plies energy to the storage device and/or to the load
(t2 to t4 ),
• discharge mode, in which both main source
and storage device supply energy to the load (t1 to
t2 ),
• recovery mode, in which the load supplies en-
ergy to the storage device (t4 to t5 ).
The proposed control scheme is that one takes ad-
vantage of a battery bank, which is directly connected
to the DC bus for supplying transient energy demand
and peak loads required during motor acceleration
and deceleration, as if this device is a standard source.
Besides, the fuel cell as a slow dynamic device func-
tions to supply energy to a battery bank to keep them
charged.
The control strategy is a cascade control structure
composed of three loops. The outer loop is a bat-
194 ECTI TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL ENG., ELECTRONICS, AND COMMUNICATIONS VOL.5, NO.2 August 2007
tery state-of-charge (SOC) control loop composed of
SOCREF as a reference of SOC and iBatREF as a
control variable output demanding a battery charg-
ing current. The middle loop is the battery current
control composed of iBatREF as a battery current ref-
erence coming from the outer loop and iF CREF as a
control variable output demanding a fuel cell current.
The inner loop is the fuel cell current control loop as
already explained in the previous section.
2.3...1 Control Loop of Battery State-of-Charge and
Current
The well-known SOC estimation is defined as [14],
Z t
1
SOC(t) = SOCo + iBat (τ )dτ (1)
QBat to
where SOCo is the known battery SOC [%] at the
time to and QBat is the rated capacity [Ah]. The sim-
ple method to charge the battery is a constant current
(maximum current IBatM ax is set around QBat /5 -
QBat /10) when SOC is far from a SOCREF and re-
duced current when SOC is near SOCREF and zero
when SOC is equal to SOCREF as illustrated in Fig.
5 [15].
More importantly, in automotive applications, bat-
tery monitoring is obligatory in order to replace an
aged battery [6], [16]. In particular, the potential ca-
pacity QBat is dependent on the depth of discharge,
discharge rate, cell temperature, charging regime,
dwell time at low and high states of charge, battery
maintenance procedures, current ripple, and amount
and frequency of overcharge [17], [18].
Note here that it is beyond the scope of this paper
to observe the potential capacity of the battery. It is
assumed that QBat is constant. And in a real system
of applications, SOCo can be retained in a storage
device.
By this SOC algorithm, a proportional controller
(P-controller) is enough to generate a battery charg-
ing current iBatChar . And the charging current must
be limited at IBatM ax . So the proportional gain
(GSOC ) can be sized as,
IBatM ax
GSOC = (2)
∆SOC
where ∆SOC is the defined band of a battery SOC.
Fig.5: Charging battery algorithm.
To avoid over-voltage at the DC bus in case of an
erroneous SOC estimation, vBus must be monitored
to limit charging current. The battery current limita-
tion function consists of limiting iBatREF versus vBus
as [13],
µ ¶
VBusM ax −vBus (t)
iBatREF (t) = iBatChar (t)×min 1,
∆VBus
(3)
where VBusM ax is the defined maximum DC bus
voltage and ∆VBus is the defined voltage band.
Fig.6: Battery current limitation to DC bus voltage.
For the battery current control loop, it received
iBatREF from a SOC regulation loop. A proportional
controller is sufficient to generate iF CREF , which
must be limited in level, within an interval maximum
current IF CM ax (corresponding to a fuel cell rated
current) and minimum IF CM in (set to 0 A) and lim-
ited in slope to a maximum absolute value GSL of
some amperes per second, which enables the safe op-
eration of the fuel cell to respect constraints associ-
ated with the fuel cell, as far as the proportional gain
GiBat is high enough to introduce a small static error.
To obtain the open loop transfer function associ-
ated with the battery current control loop, one can
write power conservation (without losses) as:
vF C (t) · iF C (t) = vBus (t) · iBat (t) + pL (t) (4)
If variations are introduced and the load power is
considered as a disturbance of the system, equation
(4) becomes,
VBus
ĩF C (t) = ĩBat (t) (5)
VF C
where VBus and VF C are the nominal DC bus and
fuel cell voltage, respectively.
Therefore, the open loop transfer function can be
written with a gain depending on the operating point
as,
ĩBat (s)/ĩF C (s) f ilter
¯ P controller z }| { z }| {
ĩBatM ea (s) ¯¯ z }| { VF C GBat
¯ = GiBat · ·
ĩBatREF (s) OL VBus TBats+1
(6)
Control of Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Source for Electric Vehicle Applications 195

A first-order low pass filter is used for the battery

current measurement in order to reduce current rip-
ples caused by the switching frequency of the fuel cell
and electric load (motor drive) converters.

2.3...2 Conclusion of Proposed Control Algorithm

The control of the whole system is based on the

SOC of the battery, whatever the load current is:
• if SOC is lower then SOCREF , the battery
charging current reference is positive and a fuel cell
current is necessary to charge the battery;
• if SOC is higher than SOCREF , the battery
charging current reference is equal to zero and the Fig.7: Hybrid source test bench.
fuel cell current reference is reduced to zero.
As a consequence, a transient in the load modifies
the fuel cell current when the battery SOC becomes
lower than SOCREF . In any case if SOC is higher
than SOCREF , the fuel cell current reference is equal
to zero.
For transient conditions, as fuel cell current dy-
namics have been intentionally reduced, the battery
supplies all load variations.

3. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
Fig.8: Battery bank: 7.78 Ah , 12 V connected in
3. 1 Test Bench Description 4-series (total 48 V).

The small-scale test bench is presented in Fig. 7.

The storage device is four aged lead-acid batteries of
7.78 Ah (33 Ah at name plate), 12 V connected in se-
ries as shown in Fig. 8. As illustrated in Fig. 9, the
PEM fuel cell system was constructed by the ZSW
company (Zentrum für Sonnenenergie und Wasser-
stoff - Forschung, Germany). It is composed of 23
cells of 100 cm2 in series. It is supplied with pure hy-
drogen from bottles under pressure and with clean,
dry air from a compressor [19].
The parameters associated with the battery SOC
and current regulation loop are detailed in Table I
and II, respectively. The fuel cell current absolute
slope limitation (GSL ) is set to 4 A/s. This value
has been experimentally determined as the highest Fig.9: PEM fuel cell stack: 23 cells, 500 W, 40 A
current slope of this fuel cell system, where no fuel [19].
starvation occurs [19]. The battery current control
loop has been implemented in the real-time controller
card dSPACE DS1104 with a sampling frequency of Table 1: Battery SOC Regulation Loop Parameters.
25 kHz. The ControlDesk software enables changes
SOCREF QBus IBatM ax ∆SOC VBusM ax ∆VBus GSOC
in the parameters of the control loops. 100% 7.78Ah 4.5A 1.5% 61V 2V 3
The experimental tests have been carried out by
connecting the DC bus to an active load composed of
a 2-quadrant converter, loaded by a separarately ex-
cited DC motor coupled with a DC generator. A mo- Table 2: Battery Current Regulation Loop Param-
tor functions with the cascade current-speed control eters.
structure. A hysteresis and PI controller are selected GSL IF CM ax IF CM in GiBat GBat TBat
4 A/s 30 A 0A 30 1 31.8 ms
for the motor current and speed loops, respectively,
with a current limitation at +/-60 A.
196 ECTI TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL ENG., ELECTRONICS, AND COMMUNICATIONS VOL.5, NO.2 August 2007

Fig.10: Hybrid system response during motor drive cycle.

Control of Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Source for Electric Vehicle Applications
3. 2 Experimental Result
Fig. 10 presents waveforms obtained during a mo-
tor drive cycle. It shows the DC bus and fuel cell volt-
ages; motor speed; fuel cell, battery, and load (motor)
powers; fuel cell, battery, and motor currents; and
battery SOC curves. The initial state is zero for the
motor, fuel cell, and battery powers and 100% SOC.
First, the motor starts to 1,500 rpm at t = 4 s.
One can observe that
• the battery supplies most of the 1800-W power
required during motor acceleration,
• the fuel cell current increases with a limited slope
of 4 A/s up to a limited maximum level of 30 A,
• simultaneously the battery current, after a sharp
decreases (negative) during motor acceleration, in-
creases slowly to -10 A, because the steady state
load power (approximately 800 W) is greater than
the maximum fuel cell power set at around 380 W.
Second, after that at t = 56 s the motor reduces
speed to stop with the peak load power approximately
-600 W; consequently, the battery is deeply charged in
which the battery recovers the energy supplied to the
DC bus by the fuel cell (limited slope) and the motor,
automatically. After the end of regenerative braking,
the battery is charged at a constant current of around
4 A (IBatM ax = 4.5 A, a small error introduced by
the battery current controller, P-controller) by the
fuel cell current of 16 A. Finally, when battery SOC
is 98.5% at t = 106 s, the battery charging current is
reduced automatically because of ∆SOC = 1.5%, and
GSOC = 3, and the fuel cell current is synchronously
reduced. After that both the fuel cell and battery
current will reduce to zero at the 100% SOC.
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, an innovative method on how to
function a fuel cell/battery hybrid power source is
explained in detail. The control strategy lies in us-
ing fuel cell to supply energy to load and to battery
charged with respect to the fuel cell dynamics. Hence,
the control principle presents how to avoid the fast
transition of the fuel cell current, in order to prevent
fuel starvation problems by controlling the fuel cell
current slope and then reducing mechanical stresses
in the fuel cell system (fuel pressure, water pressure
in tubes and stack). The proposed control structure
is easier than normal state machines used for hybrid
source regulation. It is also free of chattering prob-
lems.
An experiment was carried out by means of a hy-
brid test bench, which employs a storage device com-
posed of four 33 Ah lead-acid batteries connected in
series, a 500-W PEM fuel cell, and the DC motor
drive as a load at DC bus. The results have evidently
shown the excellent performance during motor drive
cycle. Power at DC bus between the sourecs (fuel
cell and battery) and load is aways balance during
no-load and non-linear load (motor start and stop).
197
More important, lifetime of fuel cell will be increased
because no fuel starvation occurs [19], [20].
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Based on research carried out over several years,
this work was conducted under a posdoctoral re-
search program in cooperation the Thai-French Inno-
vation Centre (King Mongkut’s Institute of Technol-
ogy North Bangkok) with Institut National Polytech-
nique de Lorraine under the ”Franco-Thai on higher
education and research joint project” and supported
in part by the French National Center for Scientific
Research (CNRS) and the Nancy Research Group in
Electrical Engineering (GREEN: UMR 7037). The
author would like to deeply thank Prof. Dr. Bernard
Davat and Prof. Dr. St?phane Ra?l who gave advices
on the subjects of fuel cell and battery and also Dr.
Idris Sadli, who operated the fuel cell system during
experimentations.
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