Development of the Integrated Fuel Cell Monitoring System

>> The interest of New Renewable Energy is increasing globally because of the increment of the uncertainty for the energy’s supply and demand, and the increment of the frequency in weather anomaly and its damages. One of the New Renewable Energies, Hydrogen receives attention as the future energy that can deal with global environment regulation. Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) is an environment-friendly vehicle that uses Hydrogen as fuel. The electric power for FCEV is generated by chemical reaction with Oxygen from the air and Hydrogen. Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) has developed a proprietary fuel cell system since 2005. In 2012, HMC is the first car maker that mass-produces the ix35 FCEV to the worldwide such as North America, Europe, etc. In order to develop and improve the FCEV technology, data acquisition and analysis of the driving vehicle information is essential. Therefore, the monitoring system is developed, which is consist of datalogger, Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) server and main server. Especially, WCDMA technology is integrated into the system which enables the data analysis without any restriction of time and region. The main function of the system is the analysis of the driving pattern and the component durability, and the safety monitoring. As a result, ix35 FCEV has successfully developed by using the developed monitoring system. The system is going to take an advantage of development in the future FCEV technology.