This MS thesis designs a control strategy for a hybrid power supply to coordinate a fuel cell and a battery to work together and exploit their advantages and undermine their disadvantages. The aspect of making two power sources work together is to have the fuel cell behave like a current source and have the battery behave like a voltage source. The digital controller designed in this thesis regulates the current output of the DC/DC converter of the fuel cell the achieve current source operation. The battery, the load and the fuel-cell fed converter, are connected in parallel to serve the load.

Richard Charles Smith earned his Bachelor of Science degree inelectrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin inMay 2006. He entered the Master of Science program at Texas A&MUniversity in August 2006 and received his MS degree in August2009. His ambitions are to live and work in Texas in the energyindustry.