Patent ID: 7060380

Claim:
A fuel cell power supply device comprising: a fuel cell; reactive gas supply means for supplying reactive gases to said fuel cell; supplied-amount regulating means for regulating an amount of reactive gases supplied from said reactive gas supply means to the fuel cell; requested output current determining means for determining a requested output current of the fuel cell depending on a requested electric energy of a load when said load is connected to the fuel cell and is then supplied with an electric energy; gas supply control means for permitting said supplied-amount regulating means to control the amount of reactive gases supplied to the fuel cell so as to obtain said requested output current; first storage means for storing data of an internal resistance of the fuel cell; fuel cell open-circuit voltage recognizing means for recognizing an open-circuit voltage of the fuel cell; and output characteristics estimating means for estimating output current/voltage characteristics of the fuel cell by substituting a linear function in which a gradient indicates the internal resistance of the fuel cell and an intercept of an output voltage axis indicates the open-circuit voltage of the fuel cell for the output current/voltage characteristics, wherein said requested output current determining means determines an output current of the fuel cell, which is obtained by applying the requested electric energy of the load to said linear function, as the requested output current.