Optimal Load Sharing Strategy

in a Hybrid Power System based on

PV/Fuel Cell/ Battery/Supercapacitor
Samson Gebre T.*, Tore M. Undeland(IEEE Fellow)**, Øystein Ulleberg*, Preben J. S. Vie *
* Institute for Energy Technology, NO-2027 Kjeller, (Norway)
** NTNU, Institutt for Elkraftteknikk, NO-7491 Trondheim,(Norway)

Abstract—This paper presents an optimal load sharing decoupled, which is opposite to when secondary batteries
strategy for a PV/FC/battery/supercap hybrid power system are used as energy storage. In this paper the case with
that optimizes the system performance. The fuel cell is used fuel cell supplied from a hydrogen container is
to complement the intermittent output of the PV source considered.
while the battery storage is used to compensate for part of One problem with the fuel cell is its relative slow
the temporary peak demand which the PV and fuel cell
dynamics caused by the time constant of the hydrogen
can’t meet thus avoiding oversizing of fuel cell.
Supercapacitor energy storage is employed to relieve the and gas supply systems that can be in the order of several
battery of narrow and repeated transient charging and seconds [3]. If a fuel cell was connected to a step increase
discharging ensuring longer battery life. Both the battery in load, it would provide the current, but the voltage
and the supercapacitor cover the slow power response of the could instantaneously drop off the V-I curve and the fuel
fuel cell. A power flow control strategy is developed and cell would take several seconds until it begins feeding the
simulation results are presented to demonstrate its required power. In the mean time the fuel cell may be
effectiveness. starved of fuel which is not good for the electrocatalyst
shortening its life [4]. Therefore, the fuel cell should be
Index Terms—Hybrid, Fuel cell, Photovoltaic, Battery, operated under controlled dynamic regimes, ensuring an
Supercapacitor, MPPT, DC/DC Converter.
optimum performance and durability of the fuel cell.
Batteries and supercapacitors (SCs) respond faster than
I. INTRODUCTION
a fuel cell for a fast step increase or decrease in power
Depletion of conventional energy sources as fossil demand. Thus using these energy storage(s) together with
fuels, growing awareness of impact of environmental fuel cells improves performance and fuel cell life by
pollution and abundance of renewable energy have absorbing faster load changes and preventing fuel
motivated immense interest towards alternative energy starvation of the fuel cell. Adding these storages will
sources [1]. Solar (photovoltaic) energy is a major enable the hybrid system to follow fast changing loads
renewable energy source at the forefront of stand-alone while allowing the fuel cell to respond at a slower rate. In
and distributed power systems. addition, by sizing the battery to supply the peaking load
Photovoltaic (PV) power systems are, however, in surplus of what can be met by the fuel cell and PV, the
dependent on climatic conditions making them an fuel cell can be sized only for the base (average) load.
intermittent power source. Their output varies with the This avoids oversizing of the fuel cell as long as the
amount of solar radiation available and ambient battery swing can cover the deficit peaking load duration
temperature. Therefore, the generated power depends on increasing the peak power capability of the system. To
the time of year, time of day and the amount of clouds. A guarantee an increased lifetime of the battery, a
stand-alone PV-based power system needs, therefore to supercapacitor is used in parallel to relieve the battery of
be hybridized with either other complementary energy- stresses due to steep, shorter and more frequent transients
sources or -storages to ensure a reliable power supply. while the battery takes on more extended peak loads. The
Use of fuel cells (FC) in combination with a PV generator supercapacitor can have almost unlimited cycling
may ensure an uninterruptible power supply as long as capability but lower energy density as opposed to the
the fuel cell power can meet the power deficit. Fuel cells battery with limited cycling and higher energy density[5].
show a particular promise as they can operate on The hybrid power system proposed in this paper can
hydrogen with zero emissions, have a relative high be an attractive option for remote applications away from
efficiency (30-60%), and have a limited number of utility AC mains. One such application is remote
moving parts with a flexible modular structure [1],[2]. telecommunication systems. Most of the hybrid power
The fuel cell can either be supplied with hydrogen from systems in use today for remote applications have a diesel
purchased gas containers or be produced from water in an genset as an important component. Using fuel cells
electrolyzer which is supplied with surplus power from instead of the traditional diesel generator as back up for
the PV system. In fuel cells, the power and energy is reliability of power availability has advantages. In
addition to being environmental friendly, fuel cells
This work was supported by the research council of Norway require much less maintenance as opposed to diesel

978-1-4244-2544-0/08/$20.00 ©2009 IEEE 141

engines which would require regular maintenance which With a maximum supercapacitor voltage never
is very expensive at a remote site. exceeding the bus voltage, a bidirectional half bridge
DC/DC converter is used which operates in boost mode
when discharging and buck mode when charging the
II. PROPOSED HYBRID POWER SYSTEM supercapacitor. This converter is also current controlled.
The architecture in Fig. 1. is proposed for the hybrid A large conventional capacitor acting as an immediate
power system which is based on the centeralized DC-bus power buffer is used to form the DC-link voltage to and
system [1],[6]. In the centeralized DC-bus configuration, from which all sources and storages feed and take power.
all the sources and storages are coupled to a common DC
bus before they are connected to the load. The load in the III. LOAD SHARING STRATEGY
figure stands for either a DC-load or a voltage source For reliability and balance of power, the relation in (1)
inverter depending on the application. should be met at all times.
I = I FC + I Batt + I SC (1)

where I is the load current minus the PV current, and

all currents are seen from the DC-bus. The values and
signs of the currents seen from the DC-link depend on the
type of loading at that instant and which strategy that is
used.
The basis for the load sharing strategy adopted should
be in line with the following objectives:
1) Maximum utilization of PV source
2) The fuel cell source is used to complement or
replace the PV and should be used as minimally as
possible to save fuel
3) Battery is used as a temporary energy storage to
shave the peak load requirement in excess of PV
plus fuel cell
4) The supercapacitor is used to supply or sink high,
narrow and more frequent transient loads
5) High degree of availability of power supply
Fig. 1. Architecture of proposed hybrid power system. 6) Safe operation of fuel cell stack and battery

The PV generator is coupled to the DC bus via a buck- Based on the above objectives the fuel cell is sized to
based DC/DC maximum power point tracker (MPPT) to supply the steady state or average load demand and
track the maximum power point where the PV plant always fills the valleys of the fluctuating PV power
generates the maximum possible power output for a given output by automatically adjusting its output. The battery
irradiance, ambient temperature and loading condition. is sized such that the maximum allowed charge swing
This enables to utilize the renewable energy to the should cover the peaking duration even without the PV
maximum. generator. The supercapacitor is sized to swing between
The low and highly variable load dependent voltage of the voltages Vmin and Vmax while supplying the energy
the PEM fuel cell stack is boosted to the DC-bus level via
a phase shifted PWM (PSPWM) transformer isolated given in (2) which should be sufficient to compensate for
DC/DC converter. The converter is current controlled to the duration of the power transients where Vmin and
shape the fuel cell output to safe magnitude and rate. Vmax are the minimum and maximum voltages and C is
A low volt-ampere(VA) rated buck DC/DC converter
steadily charges the Lithium-ion battery during light the capacitance of the supercapacitor.
loading when the bus voltage becomes higher than the
battery voltage. When the bus voltage goes below the
battery voltage which is indication of a heavier loading in E=
1
2
(
Vmax − Vmin
2 2
) (2)
surplus of the power output from the fuel cell and PV
combined, the diode becomes forward biased discharging
IV. POWER FLOW CONTROL
the battery. During the longer period of normal loading,
the low VA DC/DC converter having smaller inductor An effective, active control of power flow from
charges the battery slowly at steady-state. The battery sources and to/from storage devices is required to
charger is also current controlled to control the charging maintain power balance at all times while satisfying the
current depending on the status of the bus voltage objectives described in section 3. This should keep the
compared to the battery voltage DC bus voltage within a given band around a nominal
voltage.

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 This can be achieved by having a lower level control B. Fuel Cell Subsystem
of the component converters which directly modulates the The fuel cell DC/DC converter boosts the fuel cell
switches and a higher level supervisory monitoring to voltage to the DC bus voltage level. The converter should
decide how and in which mode the converters should be be controlled to keep the bus voltage around a set point. It
controlled. Each component has its own embedded should control the fuel cell power output such that when
controller incorporated into its converter to directly the DC link voltage is low as in, for example, heavy
control the amount, direction and rate of power flow. The loading or low battery or supercap charge, more power
supervisory control is effected within a power flow flows from the fuel cell into the bus while the current
management center (PMC) which takes as input the flow from the FC decreases as the DC link gets full, as in
instantaneous bus voltage, and currents and voltages from light loading and full battery and supercap charge.
battery, supercapacitor, fuel cell and PV and outputs The control objective is carried out by using an
appropriate signals to the different subsystems. The bus external DC-link state of charge control loop which takes
voltage is used as the main control parameter to indicate the bus voltage set point as reference and produces a FC
the level of loading at any instant to prompt more or less current reference. This outer control can be a simple
power output from the FC, battery or supercapacitor. proportional controller with gain set to a value which
would draw maximum fuel cell current when the DC link
A. PV Subsystem reaches the maximum depth allowed. The maximum
depth of discharge translates into the lower limit of the
To fully utilize the renewable energy from the PV, it
bus voltage band. A very fast internal current control loop
should normally be operated at the maximum power
implemented as PI is employed which uses the FC
point. A buck converter based MPPT is used to achieve
reference current set point to control the FC output
this. The MPPT adopted in this paper uses the one
current as shown in Fig. 3. The FC stack reference
reported in [7] due to its simplicity and effectiveness.
current is also continuously fed back to the hydrogen and
Any surplus PV (plus FC) energy than required by the
air supply system to generate the required flow rates to
load is used to charge the battery and supercapacitor. But
meet the demanded power.
excess energy, may still overcharge the DC bus.
Use of a current controller also makes it possible to
Therefore, during times of very high PV output and low
regulate the safe current limit of the FC. The external
loading where the PV energy becomes excess of what is
control is also equipped with a rate limiter to produce a
required for charging and meeting the load demand, some
ramping current reference allowing the fuel cell to
of the PV energy is dumped by deviating the PV
respond at the required rate. The rate employed can
operating point away from the MPP or using a dump
depend on the type of the fuel cell used and the fuel and
load.
air supply time constants or whether the FC is cold or is
The first case can be handled by having two modes of
required to power a step load.
control for the PV converter where the control changes
from MPPT mode to MPP deviate mode when the bus
voltage exceeds a given reference and back to MPPT
mode when the voltage goes below this reference.
Therefore, the duty cycle of the PV converter is generated
for maximum power within the PMC during MPPT mode
and directly in the converter control for bus voltage
control during MPP deviate mode. The PV subsystem
control is depicted in Fig. 2.

Fig. 3. Control of Fuel Cell Subsystem

C. Battery Subsystem
The battery is charged during low loading from the PV
and fuel cell via a smaller buck converter. It is rated for a
lower charging current rather than a large discharge
current which would be the case if a bidirectional
Fig. 2. Control of PV Subsystem
buck/boost were used. Therefore, the converter will be

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able to charge the battery slowly but with a smaller The control strategy for the SC subsystem is shown in
charging current. Fig. 5. The PMC produces a reference voltage to the
The PMC decides whether the battery is charged or controller such that its value is the minimum supercap
discharged depending on the voltage of the DC bus with voltage if the bus voltage goes below the nominal value
respect to the battery voltage. It compares the two and maximum supercap voltage otherwise producing two
voltages and gives a charge or discharge signal to the sets of reference currents for the inner loop.
battery controller in the form of a switch on or off of the
converter PWM. The possible scenarios at some instant
of time are explained below.
When Vbatt<Vbus, assuming the bus nominal voltage
is equal to the full charge voltage of the battery, this
condition occurs when the battery is not full. In this case
the PMC switches on the buck converter PWM. The
battery controller now generates the switch duty cycle
depending on charging current reference set by an outer
battery voltage control as was done for the fuel cell
subsystem. The reference voltage to the outer loop is set
around the full charge battery voltage. Magnitude and
rate limit of the reference current inherently keeps
charging current within safe limit and allows the
supercapacitor to take only narrow power spurts by Fig. 5. Supercapacitor Subsystem
delaying the rate of battery charging. A fast hysteresis
controller is used for the inner current control as shown in These operations correspond to a discharge and
Fig. 4. charge operations respectively.

V. SIMULATION RESULTS
To test the effectiveness of the control strategy, the
system is simulated in SIMULINK/SIMPOWER over a
1000 second cycle for the load profile shown in Fig. 10.
The load has an average value of 1.1kW, a peaking
portion of double the average value over a duration of
150s and a power spurt over 10s of 2.4kW. The load
profile is designed to test whether all objectives have
been satisfied. A conventional capacitor of 0.3F is used
for the 48V DC bus.
The fuel cell is a 1.2kW, 12-20V, PEM. A steady state
model based on a nonlinear fit of measured data to the
well known equation (3) is implemented [8].

Fig. 4. Battery Subsystem

Eo , b , R , m and n are parameters while E and i are
cell voltage and current. The equation is linearly scaled
The condition Vbatt>Vbus occurs during a higher by multiplying by the number of cells N in the stack to
loading as in peak load which may have drawn some of model the whole stack. A steady state model is sufficient
the immediate energy in the DC link or during a step as the fuel cell stack here is controlled to operate close to
increase in load which the FC can’t immediately respond steady state. In this simulation a ramping rate of
to. In this case the PMC sends a discharge signal ±25A/25s is used for the current reference.
switching the converter off. The diode naturally becomes
forward biased to allow discharging until the DC link E = Eo − b log i − Ri − m exp(ni) (3)
voltage reaches the nominal value either due to the
peaking duration is over or the fuel cell has now started The PV source is modeled as an output of an MPPT
supplying sufficient power. over 1000s and is implemented with SIMPOWER
controlled current source block. The PV output is a
D. Supercapacitor Subsystem variable power source with average value around 1.2kW.
A 11Ah, with full charge voltage 48V Lithium ion
With maximum capacitor voltage never exceeding the
battery is used. A user defined model of SIMPOWER is
bus voltage a bidirectional half bridge DC/DC converter
is used which operates in boost mode when discharging implemented by calibrating the model to
charge/discharge curves given by the manufacturer.
and buck mode when charging the supercap. The buck
A simple SIMPOWER capacitor with ESR and
boost converter is also current controlled whose set point
leakage resistances is used to model the supercapacitor.
is determined by the status of the DC bus voltage.

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The capacitance of the supercapacitor bank was Fig. 6. Battery charging and reference current.
calculated to supply 2.4kW (50A) constant power for 10s
using equation (2) with a charge swing from maximum The battery percent state of charge (SOC) calculated
voltage of 48V to minimum voltage of 24V as shown in from the battery current using (6) is shown in Fig. 9.
(4) where losses have been neglected. A maximum depth where Crated is rated capacity in Ah and SOC0 is initial
of 50% of nominal voltage allows a 75% energy SOC of battery in percentage.
utilization while keeping the converter switch rating
reasonably lower [9]. t
1
­1 ½
SOC (t ) = SOC0 +
Crated ³i batt (t )dt (6)

° 2 C (Vmax − Vmin ) = Δt × V × I °
2 2 0

° °
°1 °
® C (48 − 24 ) = 10 × 48 × 50 ¾
2 2
(4)
°2 °
°C = 27.77 F °
°¯ °¿

The gain of the bus voltage controller for the fuel cell
subsystem should be able to produce the maximum fuel
cell reference current for the lower limit of the bus
voltage band. It is calculated as in (5).

I fc ( ref ) max
Gain = (5)
Vbus ( ref ) − Vbus min

All converters are modeled as switched models in

SIMPOWER. Currents and voltages have been low pass Fig. 7. Fuel cell and reference current.
filtered.

Fig. 6. and Fig. 7. show how accurately the battery and

fuel cell current controllers follow the trajectories of their
current references. The intended rates as well as limits of
the fuel cell and battery currents have been achieved with
very good accuracy. The charging current of the battery
has been limited to 30A and the fuel cell current to 25A.

The DC link voltage is also well controlled and kept

within 45 to 50V throughout the whole period as shown
in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. DC-link voltage.

Fig. 10. shows how the load current is shared among

the different sources and storages. All currents are with
respect to an almost constant 48V bus voltage. At t=0s,
the battery is 50% SOC, the fuel cell is producing almost
zero power and the supercapacitor is fully charged.
Initially the PV power is sufficient to meet the load
requirements. However, more power is required to charge
the battery. This power can only come from the fuel cell
and it is shown that the fuel cell slowly ramps up to 25A
(full capacity). At 25s, the battery is being charged at a
combined PV/FC current of 30A.

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 At around t=173s, because of the surplus PV power VI. CONCLUSIONS
the FC starts saving power. A power spurt of 10s at 200s An effective load sharing and control strategy has been
initiates the supercap to respond fast while the battery developed for a PV/FC/Battery/Supercap hybrid power
smoothly reduces its charging current but never system that optimizes availability, performance, fuel
discharges. economy and safety. The simulation results show that the
control strategy is effective in meeting high degree of
power availability, and reduced cycling of battery. The
battery is also relieved from steep charging currents by
slightly delaying the current reference improving
charging efficiency and enabling the supercapacitor
efficiently to take the steep currents. A near full
controllability of battery, supercap and fuel cell enables
operation of the units within safe limits in addition to
making it possible to shape the trajectories of their power
responses.

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Fig. 10. Currents shared by components referred to DC-bus.

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