Method and system for fuel cell control
AssigneeVisteon Global Technologies, Inc.
InventorsClark Hochgraf, Prabhakar Singh
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Abstract
A control system (20) for controlling the state of charge in an energy storage device (28) by manipulating the voltage of a fuel cell (24) through dynamic system modeling of predetermined parameters (21) for the fuel cell (24) as well as the energy storage device (28). According to the method (100) of the present invention, manipulation (108) of predetermined parameters related to the fuel cell and the energy storage device control the energy storage device to a desired state of charge or divides the load current between the two devices.
Claims14
A system for controlling an output of a fuel cell, said system comprising:
- a fuel cell having an output voltage;
- an energy storage device directly paralleled to said fuel cell;
- a controller in communication with said fuel cell, said controller for controlling an output voltage of said fuel cell and an output voltage of said energy storage device, said controller having logic for controlling said fuel cell voltage as a function of predetermined parameters and said energy storage device state of charge as a function of said predetermined parameters;
- and
- wherein said controller models, measures and controls a subset of said predetermined parameters for said fuel cell and said predetermined parameters of said energy storage device to control a state-of-charge of said energy storage device.
A method for controlling an output of a fuel cell system having, a controller, a fuel cell in communication with the controller, an energy storage device directly paralleled to the fuel cell, and an external load, said method comprising the steps of:
- determining a desired state of charge for said energy storage device;
- measuring a load current;
- modeling predetermined parameters of the fuel cell and the energy storage device based on said desired state of charge;
- controlling a state-of-charge for the energy storage device based on said predetermined parameter models;
- and
- coordinating voltage-current characteristics for the energy storage device with voltage-current characteristics for the fuel cell.
A method of controlling the state of charge for an energy storage device in a system having a fuel cell in communication with a controller and directly paralleled to an energy storage device and an external load, said method comprising the steps of:
- determining a current state of charge for the energy storage device;
- determining a desired state of charge for the energy storage device;
- modeling a subset of predetermined parameters of the fuel cell and the energy storage device based on the measured value of a load current;
- controlling a voltage of the fuel cell based on the predetermined parameter models;
- and
- coordinating a voltage-current characteristic of the storage device with a voltage-current characteristic of the fuel cell to adjust the current state of charge to the desired state of charge for the energy storage device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.