Dynamic Assessment of COTS Converters-Based DC Integrated Power Systems in Electric Ships

Maritime applications have found in the integration of the electric power system a way to further improve efficiency and reduce the weight of new electric ships. This movement has led scientists to integrate smart management systems to optimize the overall behavior of the grid. In this context, power electronics play a key role in linking the different elements of the power architecture. Moreover, the transition toward a dc distribution, which has already been established in other applications, is being regarded as a promising alternative to ease the integration of renewable sources, batteries, and the ever increasing number of dc loads. In this paper, blackbox models are proposed as a tool to foresee the effect of these complex interactions, overcoming the lack of detailed information about the power converters. Large-signal strategies are proposed in order to consider nonlinearities in the static and dynamic behavior of the converters. An accurate model of the physical layer is essential to allow intelligent systems to take the most out of the system performance. This approach offers the opportunity to study the dynamic response of complex interconnected systems, tune the system-level controllers, design protections, or assess the compliance of the system dynamics with the standards. Experimental results are included in order to validate the proposed method.