2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The push for more sustainable energy sources increases as energy demand increases. This paper presents the configuration of a hydrogen fuel cell and a battery to increase the efficiency of a practical power source for a sustained Direct Current (DC) load for the milestones of a senior capstone project in an Electrical Engineering major.   The fuel cell system combines a 200W, 15V Hydrogen Fuel Cell Stack and hydrogen storage tank provided by electrolyzed hydrogen contained in the LWH22-10L-5 Hydrostick Pro. To test the outputs of the fuel cell, a series of different sensors are used, including built-in voltage sensors in an Arduino UNO, two Diymall DC 0-25V voltage sensors, and two 30A Range ACS712 Module current sensors where all outputs displayed in MATLAB through an Arduino UNO. The goal is to design a switching schedule between a battery and the hydrogen fuel cell to run the load.  The system has been prepared based on the Arduino sensors to read the current and voltage inputs from the respective energy sources.  The Arduino sensors used these inputs to switch between these power sources by feeding them into a solid-state relay. The solid-state relay acts as a gate to power the load with energy supplied efficiently.  The final step of this system was to implement the intelligent aspect.  This smart switching system uses computer coding to run the energy sources without human interaction.