Modelling and Simulation of Fuel Cell/supercapacitor passive hybrid vehicle system

The concept of passive hybridization system is to develop a single-stage power conversion topology in which fuel cell and supercapacitor can be directly coupled, leading to low cost and compactness in the absence of DC/DC converters. The paper deals with the modelling and simulation of a fuel cell drivetrain system with the passive connection to the supercapacitor. The powertrain component losses are modeled with a high level of detail, and they are functions of both speed and load. Illustrative results show that in the passive hybrid system, the supercapacitors can serve as a low-pass filter for fuel cells. As a result, the peak power requirement can be successfully achieved due to the lowered system impedance, and the fuel cell only needs to supply the average power during the drive cycle.