Design and simulation of five level multistring inverter for fuel cell applications

Fuel cell is an efficient and clean source of electricity. Among the various types of fuel cells, Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is preferred due to its less start up time and low cost. In this paper, a five level multi string inverter with converter at front end has been proposed for fuel cell applications. The design of the inverter requires only six switches instead of the conventional eight switches. The electrical model of PEMFC has been studied. The proposed multi-string inverter with fuel cell as the DC source has been simulated in MATLAB Simulink and the results are tabulated. The total harmonic distortion factor has also been tabulated.