New Hydrogen Fuel Cell Controller From Prodrive
04 April 2008
Prodrive has developed a new, production-ready control unit for hydrogen fuel cells as part of a program partially funded by the UK’s Technology Strategy Board. Called the PP150, the unit was developed in conjunction with fuel cell power systems company Intelligent Energy as part of a three-year program to develop fuel cells for real world applications.
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| Prodrive ECU on the fuel cell system. Click to enlarge. |
The PP150 is being used to control a 50 kW fuel cell system developed by Intelligent Energy. This is a first for the UK fuel cell industry.
One of the project’s aims was to ensure that the fuel cell could be started at sub-zero temperatures. To meet these demands, the control electronics went through a number of design iterations. Initial development was carried out using Prodrive’s rapid prototyping ECU, UP200. This enabled Intelligent Energy to quickly develop their core algorithms and validate them on real world hardware.
Following this initial stage, Prodrive developed a prototype ECU known as the DP200 which included bespoke hardware for the fuel cell application but retained sufficient flexibility to support development changes. Once the hardware design was fixed, Prodrive developed the PP150 which is a bespoke ECU suitable for volume production, with potential for a price around £250 (US$500) per unit.
Engineering has several factors to deal with. Cold temperature operation is important in some climates, but not others. It is a priority list of goals and what it will cost to achieve them.
As I was reading this article, I started thinking about what countries could do to bolster technical development. It seems like a good idea to have a public/private partnership for future growth. Sometimes a country gets to be known for advances in a particular field. Call in national image building or something else, but it can pay off in the long run.
Posted by: sjc | 05 April 2008 at 10:41 AM