Energy management system for a remote renewable fuel cell system

This study proposes an energy management algorithm for a renewable fuel cell system aiming to maintain the balance between the supply and the demand of a remote community load. In most cases, such communities receive power from off-grid systems due to their location as opposed to main electric utilities. For years diesel generators have been the favourite power source for these places, however, the trend is now on the use of renewable off-grid systems. Different renewable off-grid systems can be considered depending upon the available renewable resources. However, all of them required energy storage facilities to deal with the unpredictable nature of their outputs power. This paper focuses on a system including a PV array, an electrolyser, a hydrogen tank and a Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The objective is to develop an energy management system to reduce power losses and to maintain the balance between the supply and the demand depending on the availability of power. Matlab/Simulink software is used to model and simulate the system. The scenario presented in this study shows that the proposed energy management algorithm permits to balance the share of energy between the PV array and the fuel cell to the load.