Abstract

Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that convert the chemical energy of a reaction directly into electrical energy and it is a clean energy source. Among the several types of fuel cell, Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is a suitable choice for distributed energy sources. In this paper, modeling of PEM fuel cell has been carried out and simulated using MATLAB. A single phase Hybrid Multilevel Inverter (HMLI) with reduced number of switches interfaced with PEMFC has been designed and analyzed. A novel hybrid Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique which employs multiple reference signals and a single inverted sine carrier wave has been proposed for HMLI. The inverter circuit topology and its control scheme have been described in detail and their performance has been verified based on Total Harmonic Distortion using MATLAB/SIMULINK.

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