Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) is fuel cells which have low operating temperatures and are easy to miniaturize. Currently, a development of hydrogen infrastructure is being considered as a national initiative, and PEFCs are also attracting attention. However, due to a high cost of hydrogen, the running cost is high compared to other forms of power generation. So we previously proposed the MEPT (Maximum efficiency point tracking) control system, which is a highly efficient control system to reduce hydrogen consumption in fuel cells. However, this system has a problem: the hydrogen flow meter causes the detection of the maximum efficiency point to take a long time, resulting in wasteful hydrogen consumption. To solve this problem, we propose a new MEPT control that does not need a flowmeter and has a fast response time, using a newly defined efficiency voltage Ve. In this paper, we compare the amount of hydrogen used to generate electricity for the maximum power control, the previously proposed MEPT control, and the new MEPT control. As a result, the new MEPT control reduced hydrogen consumption by about 17.7% compared to the maximum power control and by about 7.7% compared to the previously proposed MEPT control.
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