• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.11-18
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• 2012

Diesel fuel is expensive because transportation to remote areas adds extra cost, and it causes air pollution by engine exhaust. Providing a feasible economical and environmental solution to diesel generators is important. A hybrid system of renewable plants and diesel generators can benefit islands or other isolated communities and increase fuel savings. Renewable energy is, however, a natural source that produces a fluctuating power output. In this paper, hybrid power system of the marado lighthouse is proposed to supply stable power in the stand-alone hybrid power system. The proposed hybrid power system consists of the diesel generator, wind turbine, photovoltaic, fuel cell, and battery bank. To decrease the carbon emissions and find the optimization, the cost analysis of hybrid system is simulated using HOMER program and the optimized hybrid power system is designed.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.551-560
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• 2003

This paper summarizes development of a 10KW stand-alone power processing unit for 5KW SOFC-low voltage battery hybrid fuel cell power generation system. The power processing unit Includes three parts a high frequency DC-DC converter boosts low fuel cell voltage, a DC-AC inverter converts a dc voltage into a regulated ac voltage and a bidirectional DC-DC converter charges or discharges the battery. The converter topology, design, control method, and experimental result arc presented to meet the specifications such as efficiency of 90% and cost of $40/KW laid down for the "2003 Future Energy Challenge Competition" organized by the U.S. Department of Energy and IEEE. and IEEE.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.1891-1901
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• 2017

In this paper, optimal control of the fuel cell and design of a high-efficiency power converter is implemented to build a high-priced fuel cell system with minimum capacity. Conventional power converter devices use a non-isolated boost converter for high efficiency while the battery is charged, and reduce its conduction loss by using MOSFETs instead of diodes. However, the efficiency of the boost converter decreases, since overshoot occurs because there is a moment when the body diode of the MOSFET is conducted during the dead time and huge loss occurs when the dead time for the maximum-power-flowing state is used in the low-power-flowing state. The method proposed in this paper is to adjust the dead time of boost and rectifier switches by predicting the power flow to meet the maximum efficiency in every load condition. After analyzing parasite components, the stability and efficiency of the high-efficiency boost converter is improved by predictive compensation of the delay component of each part, and it is proven by simulation and experience. The variation in switching delay times of each switch of the full-bridge converter is compensated by falling time compensation, a control method of PWM, and it is also proven by simulation and experience.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.230-238
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• 2003

Electric vehicles (EV) demands for greater acceleration, performance and vehicle range in pure electric vehicles plus mandated requirements to further reduce emissions in hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) increase the appeal for combined on-board energy storage systems and generators. And the power electronics plays an important role in providing an interface between fuel cells (FC) and loads. This paper deals with a multiple input DC-DC power converter devoted to combine the power flowing of multi-source on energy systems. The multi-source is composed of (i) FC system as a prime power demands, (ii) super capacitor banks as energy storage devices for high and intense power demands, (iii) superconducting magnetic energy storage system (SMES), (iv) multiple input DC-DC power converter and (v) a three phase inverter-fed permanent magnet synchronous motor as a drive. In this system, It is used super capacitor banks and superconducting magnetic energy replaces from the battery system. The modeling and transient performance simulation is effective for reducing transient influence caused by sudden charge of effective load. The main purpose of power electronic converters is to convert the DC power output from the fuel cell and other to a suitable AC voltage, which can be connected to electric loads directly (PMSM). The fuel cell and other output is connected to the DC-DC converter, which regulates the DC link voltage.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.163-165
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• 2007

Generally, the power management system of fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV) requires a unidirectional DC/DC converter for the fuel cell (FC) and a bidirectional DC/DC converter for the battery. To manage the various power flows between these modules with a simple way, a new band-gap reference voltage (BGRV) control strategy is proposed. The proposed method easily controls this variable power flow by setting the reference voltages of each converter to slightly different values, and it can be simply implemented by commercial controllers as well. The operational principle of proposed method is presented and verified experimentally by the 400W prototype.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2013

Fuel cell power system is one of the most promising energy source for the alternative energy because it has unique advantages such as high energy density, no power drop during operation, and feasible to make compact size. However, due to very low response time, fuel cell is difficult to correspond to drastic load changes and start-up operation. For solving these problem, fuel cell power system must include energy storage device such as Li-Poly battery or super capacitor. Therefore, bi-directional DC-DC converter must be required for this storage device and fuel cell-PCS control. This paper presents a design and modeling of the bi-directional DC/DC converter. Firstly, we present modeling the boost and buck mode of the bi-directional converter through both PWM switch model and state space averaging technique. Secondly, in order to minimize output ripple and transient response overshoot, we have two identical DC-DC converters interleaved and adopt two-loop voltage-current controller. The proposed bi-directional DC-DC converter's modeling method and control design have been verified with computer simulation and experimentation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.143-147
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• 2011

Operating points of a fuel cell system (FCS) can be shifted to its high-efficiency region by hybridization in a fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV), so the hydrogen can be saved. In this paper, the hydrogen consumption of an FCHV is compared to that of a fuel cell vehicle (FCV). A power management strategy is applied to the FCHV and the related simulation is carried out. The concept of equivalent hydrogen consumption is introduced in order to consider the effect of the difference between initial and final battery SOC on the total hydrogen consumption.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.606-611
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• 2011

Power electronics is a key technology for electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles. Typical power electronics converters used in electric drive vehicles include dc/dc converters, inverters, and battery chargers. New semiconductor materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and novel topologies such as the Z-source inverter (ZSI) have a great deal of potential to improve the overall performance of these vehicles. In this paper, a Z-source inverter for fuel cell vehicle application is examined under three different scenarios. 1. a ZSI with Si IGBT modules, 2. a ZSI with hybrid modules, Si IGBTs/SiC Schottky diodes, and 3. a ZSI with SiC MOSFETs/SiC Schottky diodes. Then, a comparison of the three scenarios is conducted. Conduction loss, switching loss, reverse recovery loss, and efficiency are considered for comparison. A conclusion is drawn that the SiC devices can improve the inverter and inverter-motor efficiency, and reduce the system size and cost due to the low loss properties of SiC devices. A comparison between a ZSI and traditional PWM inverters with SiC devices is also presented in this paper. Based on this comparison, the Z-source inverter produces the highest efficiency.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.5-17
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• 2017

This study focuses on the application of the PEM Fuel Cell(PEMFC) hybrid system, which includes a regenerative braking system with supercapacitor(SC) and battery. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the characteristics of regenerative energy and to propose solutions to increase regenerative energy via vehicle simulation. To achieve this target, we set the rated motor speed to 3,000/2,500/2,000 rpm. Because the flywheel is directly connected to the motor, the generator activates regenerative braking by using the rotational momentum of the flywheel when the flywheel reaches the set speed after the motor stops. We could then measure the characteristics of regenerative braking of voltage, current, power, energy change, etc. Meanwhile, we calculate the storage efficiency of the SC or the battery. Our results show that the SC stores 18% of the regenerative energy, while battery stores 15% of the energy. Since the regenerative energy decreases with the decrease of the motor rotating speed that 5,027 J and 2,915 J are restored at 3,000 and 2,500 rpm, respectively. The experimental results also prove that regenerative braking energy is able to be obtained if and only if the speed of flywheel is over 2,500 PRM, and the efficiency of the system can be further improved.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2016

In the stratosphere, the air is stable and a photovoltaic (PV) system can produce more solar energy compared to in the atmosphere. If unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) fly in the stratosphere, the flight stability and efficiency of the mission are improved. On the other hand, the weakened lift force of the UAV due to the rarefied atmosphere can require more power for lift according to the weight and/or wing area of the UAV. To solve this problem, it is necessary to minimize the weight of the aircraft and improve the performance of the power system. A regenerative fuel cell (RFC) consisting of a fuel cell (FC) and water electrolysis (WE) combined PV power system has been investigated as a good alterative because of its higher specific energy. The WE system produces hydrogen and oxygen, providing extra energy beyond the energy generated by the PV system in the daytime, and then saves the gases in tanks. The FC system supplies the required power to the UAV at night, so the additional fuel supply to the UAV is not needed anymore. The specific energy of RFC systems is higher than that of Li-ion battery systems, so they have less weight than batteries that supply the same energy to the UAV. In this paper, for a stratospheric long-endurance hybrid UAV based on an RFC system, three major design factors (UAV weight, wing area and performance of WE) affecting the ability of long-term flight were determined and a simulation-based feasibility study was performed. The effects of the three design factors were analyzed as the flight time increased, and acceptable values of the factors for long endurance were found. As a result, the long-endurance of the target UAV was possible when the values were under 350 kg, above 150 m² and under 80 kWh/kg H₂.