Experimental validation of an optimized power allocation strategy for multi-stack fuel cell

Hydrogen is more and more considered for the decarbonization of energy uses, especially for transport applications. To reach a power range of several hundred kilowatts usually met in high power applications, an association of fuel cells in multi-stack is necessary. An adapted control must therefore be designed to share the requested power among the fuel cells. This paper presents an optimized power allocation strategy based on the minimization of the consumption of the stacks. The polarization curves are considered to take the fuel cell characteristics and its state of health into account. The proposed control strategy is experimentally validated thanks to a computation in real-time on a test bench, emulating four stacks of fuel cells with different states of health. The results show the effectiveness of the developed strategy, allowing the consumption to be reduced by 1.2 % compared to a strategy based on a fair distribution. Moreover, the reconfigurability of the power allocation is validated by considering the unavailability of some of the stacks.