JP5841489B2 - Operation information management method for fuel cell system - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to an operation information management technique for a fuel cell system, and in particular, provides a control technique for recording and storing an abnormal state during a power failure.

  2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, with respect to fuel cell systems, a control technique that automatically performs a recovery operation so as to be in a restartable state when power supply is abnormal by a power system is known (for example, Patent Document 1). In this technique, the number of stoppages and the number of recovery operations due to an abnormality are stored, and when the predetermined number of times is reached, the recovery operation is prohibited and execution of unnecessary or useless recovery operations and restarts is suppressed.

On the other hand, for currently commercialized fuel cell systems, if an abnormality related to safety and durability occurs during operation, an error is displayed and a warning is issued, and the information is stored in a nonvolatile memory. Used for repair and quality control information.
However, since this control method is applied even when a power outage occurs during operation, there is a problem that abnormal information that does not cause a safety problem due to the power outage is stored and the maintenance work load is increased. . This also increases costs and hinders the spread of fuel cells.

JP 2010-10050 A

  The present invention provides a reasonable management technique for detecting an abnormal state caused by a system power failure during fuel cell operation.

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention has the following contents. That is, the operation information management method of the fuel cell system according to the present invention is:
(1) An operation information management method for a fuel cell system that, when a predetermined abnormal state is detected during operation, is stored in a storage medium as abnormality occurrence information,
When a power failure occurs during operation, the power failure occurrence phenomenon is saved in the storage medium as abnormality occurrence information, and
Among other abnormal states detected at the same time as the power failure, specific abnormal states that are determined to be substantially unnecessary due to the power failure are deleted from the stored abnormality occurrence information after the power failure is restored. And

  In the present invention, “during operation” does not necessarily mean only when the fuel cell is generating electricity, but is a concept including a state in which any part of the apparatus is in operation, such as during startup or during cool-down.

  The present invention is also applied to a system provided with an uninterruptible power supply that enables the operation of the fuel cell to continue during a power failure. In this case, a specific abnormal state does not normally occur in a system that switches to battery power feeding without instantaneous interruption, but a specific abnormal state may occur in a system that switches by instantaneous power failure or short-term power failure.

(2) In the above invention, when the power failure is recovered, the power failure recovery information is stored in the storage medium, and the abnormal state detected from the power failure recovery to a predetermined stage is restored to the power failure recovery. The specific recovery abnormal state that is determined to be substantially unnecessary due to storage is erased from the stored abnormality occurrence information.
(3) In the above invention, when the specific abnormal state or the specific recovery abnormal state is detected during operation, an alarm is not issued, and when any other abnormal state is detected, an alarm is issued. Features.

(4) In the above invention, for an abnormal state other than the specific abnormal state or the specific recovery abnormal state and related to the durability of the fuel cell, the cumulative number of occurrences of the abnormality occurrence information is set to a predetermined number. It is characterized by not issuing an alarm until it reaches it.

(5) In the invention of (1), when the power failure is recovered, the power failure recovery information is stored in the storage medium, and the abnormal state detected from the power failure recovery to a predetermined stage is detected. The specific recovery abnormal state determined to be substantially unnecessary to be stored due to the power failure recovery is not stored as abnormality occurrence information.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to reduce the maintenance work load and to further reduce the cost by erasing abnormal information that does not cause a safety problem caused by a power failure.

It is a figure showing the block composition of fuel cell system 1 concerning a first embodiment. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an abnormality detection determination flow of the fuel cell system 1. It is a figure which shows the block configuration of the fuel cell system 20 which concerns on 2nd embodiment. FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an abnormality detection determination flow (a) of the fuel cell system 20. It is a figure which similarly shows the abnormality detection determination flow (b). It is a figure which shows the abnormality detection determination flow in 3rd embodiment.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to FIGS. Needless to say, the scope of the present invention is described in the claims and is not limited to the following embodiments.

<First embodiment>
FIG. 1A is a diagram showing an overall block configuration of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) system 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The fuel cell system 1 includes a fuel cell body 2 including a power generation unit 2a and a hot water storage unit 2f, a distribution board 4 that distributes power supplied from the system power supply 3 or the fuel cell 2 to each power load 5, A control unit 6 that performs operation control of the fuel cell 2 and control of abnormality detection information during a power failure according to the present embodiment is provided as a main component. Single-phase three-wire AC power (100, 200 V) is supplied from the system power supply 3.

The power generation unit 2a takes out direct-current power by electrochemically reacting hydrogen as fuel and oxygen in the air supplied as an oxidant to reform the city gas mainly composed of natural gas into hydrogen. A cell stack 2c in which power generation cells (not shown) are stacked, a power conditioner (PCS) 2d that converts DC power obtained by the cell stack 2c into AC power, and a heat dissipation heater 2e that recovers surplus power as Joule heat. It is provided as a main component. The heat radiating heater 2e may be attached to the hot water storage unit 2f side.
City gas as fuel is supplied through a gas supply pipe 7. The hot water storage unit 2f is configured to collect Joule heat and power generation exhaust heat in the heat radiating heater 2e as hot water.

As shown in the figure, sensors S1 to S11 are disposed in each part of the fuel cell system 1, and the measurement values of the sensors are constantly transmitted to the control unit 6. Based on the information, the operation control and the determination at the time of detecting an abnormal state are possible. Table 1 shows monitoring items and specific measurement items of each sensor.
The control unit 6 constantly monitors the measured values in Table 1, and is configured to issue necessary commands to each unit when an abnormal value exceeding a predetermined threshold is detected during operation, standby, or the like. . The control unit 6 also includes a non-volatile memory (not shown) that stores abnormality occurrence information.
A controller 6a is attached to the control unit 6 so that the user can instruct the operation of the fuel cell system 1, and an alarm report (error display) described later can be displayed on the display panel when an abnormality occurs. In addition, although the example which mounts the control part 6 in the electric power generation unit 2a was shown in this embodiment, it is good also as an aspect provided independently.

  The control unit 6 is further configured to classify the detected abnormal states according to the cause of occurrence, and determine whether or not to store in the nonvolatile memory and whether or not to issue an alarm, as will be described later. Table 2 shows a list of abnormal state (error) types, their causes, and examples of abnormal states.

Among these, the error type A group is an abnormality on the power system side caused by a power failure, and is an abnormal state with no problem in terms of safety and durability. Group B is an abnormal state caused by the emergency stop of the fuel cell side due to a power failure. Although there is no safety problem, this may affect the durability of each part of the apparatus. Moreover, although it is unknown whether C group originates in a power failure, it is an abnormal state which has a safety problem. Furthermore, the above states that do not correspond to any of these are classified into the D group.
Note that the control unit 6 can be implemented by a device that mainly includes a microcomputer including a CPU, a clock, a RAM, a ROM, a bus, an I / O interface, and the like.

The fuel cell system 1 is configured as described above. Next, the specific contents of the abnormality detection determination flow performed by the control unit 6 in the present embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In the figure, the one-dot chain line represents the transition of the operating state of the fuel cell body.
A state where power is supplied to the load by the grid power or the fuel cell at the start of control is assumed (S101). When a power failure occurs during operation and this is detected (S102), an instruction to stop the operation of the fuel cell is issued (S103). At the same time, power failure information (occurrence time, occurrence date, cumulative operation time, cumulative operation count, fuel cell status, fuel cell operation process, temperature / flow rate / pressure of each part of power generation unit and hot water storage unit, etc.) and abnormal information group detected at the time of power failure Are temporarily recorded and stored in the nonvolatile memory of the control unit (S104).

Thereafter, when the power failure is restored (S105), the reactivation of the fuel cell is commanded (S106). Next, the error type classification shown in Table 2 is performed for the abnormality information group stored in S104, and it is determined whether or not the stored information corresponding to the cause of the abnormality is erased. Specifically, the following flow is followed.
First, it is determined whether or not the target abnormal state is an abnormality (error A group) caused by a power system specified in advance (S107). If this is the case (YES in S107), the abnormality information is deleted from the data stored in the nonvolatile memory (S114).

  If it does not fall into the error A group (NO in S107), it is next determined whether or not there is an abnormality (error B group) due to the emergency stop in Table 2 (S108). If this is not the case (NO in S108), it is an abnormality that has occurred regardless of the power failure and is necessary for maintenance, so the data stored in the nonvolatile memory is retained and an alarm is issued (S113).

  If it falls under the error B group (YES in S108), it is next determined whether or not these are abnormalities that impair the safety of the system (error C group in Table 2) (S109). If this is the case, the data stored in the non-volatile memory is retained and an alarm is issued (S113).

  If it does not fall into the error C group (NO in S109), it is further determined whether or not there is a durability-related abnormality (error D group in Table 2) (S110). If this is the case (YES in S110), one is added to the past number of occurrences of the abnormal item (S111). Further, it is determined whether or not the cumulative number of occurrences exceeds a predetermined upper limit value (S112). If the upper limit is exceeded (YES in S112), an alarm is issued (S113). If it is less than or equal to the upper limit (NO in S112), it is erased from the stored information in the nonvolatile memory without issuing an alarm (S115).

  With the above-described record storage control, abnormal information that does not cause a safety problem caused by a power failure is deleted, so that the maintenance work load can be reduced. In addition, since abnormal states related to durability are added each time they occur, an alarm is issued (or displayed) when an upper limit value is exceeded, so that it does not fall out of the scope of repair.

<Second Embodiment>
Next, another embodiment of the present invention will be described. Referring to FIG. 3, the configuration of the fuel cell system 20 according to the present embodiment is different from the above-described fuel cell system in that an uninterruptible power supply (UPS or the like) 21 that can continue the operation of the fuel cell at the time of a power failure is provided. It is to have. Each of the uninterruptible power supply devices includes a power switching device 21b including a battery 21a, a rectifier, and an inverter (not shown) as main components, and can be switched to battery power supply at the time of a system power failure, and then switched to power supply from the fuel cell 2. It is configured. During normal operation, the battery 21a is charged from the power system as needed. The inverter includes a power failure detection device 21c, and determines the presence or absence of a power failure by detecting overvoltage, undervoltage, frequency increase, frequency decrease, reverse power flow detection, underpower detection, overcurrent, isolated operation detection, and the like.
The control unit 22 is configured to perform linkage control between the uninterruptible power supply 21 and the fuel cell 2 in addition to the configuration and function of the control unit 6 of the above-described embodiment.
The other configuration is the same as that of the fuel cell system 1 including the sensors S1 to S16 for detecting an abnormal state, and thus a duplicate description is omitted.

Next, an abnormality detection determination flow and a fuel cell operation flow during normal times and power outages will be described.
Referring to FIG. 4, a state is assumed in which the power system is normal and power is supplied to the load side by fuel cell 2 (S201). Next, when a power failure is detected (S202), the flow proceeds to the flow of FIG. 5 (S203). That is, switching to battery power feeding is performed without instantaneous interruption, instantaneous interruption, or short-term power failure (S2011). At the same time, the fuel cell 2 switches to power supply to the heat dissipation heater 2e (S2012). Then, after a predetermined time (for example, 150 seconds) has elapsed (YES in S2012), the power supply is switched from the fuel cell to the load side (S2013). The battery power supply function is maintained as a system power supply replacement until the power failure is restored (S2014). Thereafter, returning to FIG. 4 and when the power failure is restored (S205), the system returns to the operation of the power supply fuel cell by the system power or the fuel cell (S201).
About the content of the abnormality detection determination flow, it is the same as the flow (FIG. 2) of the above-mentioned embodiment. In addition, when switching to battery power feeding without instantaneous interruption, the flow after S208 becomes unnecessary.

  Further, in the present embodiment, the fuel cell power is fed after the battery is temporarily fed at the time of a power failure, but the fuel cell power may be fed immediately at the time of a power failure. In this case, the abnormality detection determination flow is the same.

<Third embodiment>
Further, another embodiment of the present invention will be described. Since the configuration of the present embodiment is the same as that of the fuel cell system 1 described above, duplicate description is omitted.
Light up. This embodiment differs from the first embodiment in that the first embodiment is information processing related to a specific abnormal state that is substantially unnecessary to be stored detected at the time of a power failure. Thus, it is information processing related to a specific abnormal state that is substantially unnecessary to be stored detected after a power failure recovery.

Next, the specific contents of the abnormality detection determination flow in this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. The data processing flow of S301 to S315, that is, the occurrence of an abnormality that has occurred during a power failure, is the same as the contents of S101 to S115 of the first embodiment.
After the fuel cell operation restart command (S306) is issued, the power failure recovery information and the abnormality detected until the specified stage after the recovery (for example, a certain period of time has elapsed, the operation control of the power generation unit has progressed to a certain process, etc.) The information group is once recorded and saved in the nonvolatile memory of the control unit (S316). Next, it is determined whether or not a specific abnormal state is detected when the operation is restarted after the restoration of the power failure (S317). Each item of Table 3 is illustrated as a specific abnormal state accompanying a driving | operation restart. When such a specific abnormal state occurs (Y in S317), the abnormal information is deleted from the data stored in the nonvolatile memory (S315). If it does not correspond to the specific abnormal state (NO in S317), it is an abnormality that has occurred regardless of power failure recovery and is necessary for maintenance. Therefore, the stored data in the nonvolatile memory is retained and an alarm is issued ( S313).

  In the present embodiment, an example is shown in which a specific abnormal state that accompanies resumption of operation is once recorded and saved in a nonvolatile memory, and then erased. You can also.

  The present invention can be applied not only to PEFC fuel cell systems, but also to medium and high temperature fuel cell systems such as MCFC, PAFC, SOFC, and also to cogeneration systems using a gas engine as a drive source.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1, 20 ... Solid polymer fuel cell system 2 ... Fuel cell 2a ... Power generation unit 2b ... Fuel processing apparatus 2c ... Cell stack 2d ... Power conditioner (PCS)
2e ... Heat radiating heater 2f ... Hot water storage unit 3 ... System power supply 4 ... Distribution board 5 ... Power load 6, 22 ... Control unit 21 ... None Power outage (UPS)
21a ... Battery S1-S16 ... Sensor

Claims (4)

When a predetermined abnormal state is detected during operation, a fuel cell system operation information management method for storing the abnormal state in a storage medium as abnormality occurrence information,
When a power failure occurs in the power system during operation, the power failure occurrence phenomenon is stored in the storage medium as abnormality occurrence information, and
Of the abnormal states other than the power failure occurrence phenomenon detected at the same time as the power failure, the abnormality occurrence information related to the specific abnormal state determined to be substantially unnecessary due to the power failure was saved after the power failure was restored. Erase from the error occurrence information,
When a power failure is recovered, the power failure recovery phenomenon is stored in the storage medium as a power failure recovery information , and
Stored in the storage medium an abnormal state has been detected from the power recovery up to a predetermined stage as the abnormality occurrence information, among its,
About abnormality occurrence information related to the abnormal state of the fuel cell body, which is determined to be substantially unnecessary due to power failure recovery, is erased from the saved abnormality occurrence information.
An operation information management method for a fuel cell system. Without warning when the specific abnormal state or the abnormal state of the fuel cell body is detected during operation, and
When other abnormal conditions are detected, an alarm is issued.
The operation information management method for a fuel cell system according to claim 1. 3. The abnormality occurrence information relating to the specific abnormality state or the abnormality occurrence information relating to an abnormality state other than the abnormality state of the fuel cell main body according to claim 2, wherein the abnormality relates to an abnormality state relating to durability of the fuel cell. An operation information management method for a fuel cell system, wherein the occurrence information is not issued until the cumulative occurrence number of the abnormality occurrence information reaches a predetermined number. In claim 1,
"Abnormality occurrence information according to the abnormal state of the fuel cell main body is deleted from the stored abnormality information," instead particular,
"Do not save information about the occurrence of abnormalities related to the abnormal state of the fuel cell body."
An operation information management method for a fuel cell system, characterized in that:

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