Ship power system control: a technology assessment

Abstract

This paper describes a multi-institution effort to demonstrate and assess newly developed control technologies for ship power systems. In comparison to land-based power systems, or even to earlier era of ship power systems, the now rapid incorporation of power electronics into ship power systems requires a complete redefinition of the control concepts. Furthermore, recent developments in control technology have re-opened debates over issues such as centralized versus distributed control. The complexity of the control problem calls for new hardware structures and new tools for control development and testing. A group of research institutions has teamed up to define a realistic power system scenario for testing several of the new control technologies. What level of re-configurability is reasonable to implement, how far can we push the concept of decentralized agent-based control, and what is the impact of active power management through power electronics? The following question could be addressed by the help of this research.