Non-intrusive fuel cell load interaction monitoring

Abstract

This thesis presents the development of a non-intrusive method for monitoring fuel cells. The instrumentation demands that only the readily accessible AC output terminals of the fuel cell be monitored, making it easy to install on an existing fuel cell. The monitoring hardware senses the current and voltage output of the fuel cell and converts the measurements into the digital domain. The original algorithm to process the data was the Non-Intrusive Load Monitor (NILM) system which detects specific events, classifies and stores them. The software that is described in this thesis is a data specific compression algorithm that is used to store a continuous stream of measurements so that it can be processed off line. This gives the user the ability to search for critical interactions between the fuel cell and loads in the system after the fact, rather than demanding that load and interaction dynamics be known before the monitor is installed.