Power management of an embedded fuel cell - supercapacitor APU

This paper presents the design, realization and power management of an auxiliary power unit (APU) dedicated to vehicle applications. The proposed APU is based on a parallel arrangement of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) and a supercapacitor bank. Using such an arrangement, the PEFC provides only the mean power to a 42 V DC embedded bus, whereas the supercapacitors bank is sized to respond to the electrical power requirements during transients