Battery charge system design and implementation for a small electric car using PV panels and fuel cell

Increasing world population and diminishing of fossil based energy sources have naturally increased the interest towards to new and renewable energy sources. An area where this interest is very high is electrical cars. Several automobile producers have been working on electrical cars these days. At the current stage the batteries of these cars are charged at charge stations that are fed by electrical grid.Golf cars are electrical cars that are widely used in several countries. A golf car employing a battery bank has been modified as part of this thesis work to use PV panels and hydrogen fuel cell as energy sources. A fuel cell system has been designed as a support unit for the MPPT solar energy battery charger system developed previously in a different thesis work. The fuel cell system is utilized only when there is not enough solar energy to overcome the load requirement. The purpose of doing this is to limit the efficiency loss. A DC/DC converter that converts the output voltage of a 1.2 kW fuel cell to a level suitable to charge the batteries of the car has been designed. The fuel cell is operated at constant current mode at the intervals that it is utilized. The fuel cell voltage is below the battery voltage at the determined current level, and therefore a boost converter has been chosen for the application. The power and control systems developed have been tested in the laboratory.Key Words : Solar Cells , Fuel Cell and Hybrid Electrical Vehicle