Sensorless and robust PEMFEC power system drive based on Z(Tn)observability

In this paper, a robust Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) is applied to Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell power system (PEMFC) to keep this latter working at its maximum operating power point, DC/DC interleved boost converter (IBC) is used in conjunction with the fuel cell generator for obtaining an efficient conversion from the PEMFC stack to the load. In order to minimize the number of sensors, a hybrid observer is applied to the IBC for reconstructing the system parameters values. However this particular switched system induces a difficult observability problems, such problem can be solved by a new observability concept called Z(TN)-observability. The proposed hybrid observer is based on a homogeneous observer coupled with an estimator. The performance of the proposed SMC and hybrid observer are validated by simulation studies in MATLAB/Simulink and results are discussed.