A Study of Electric Power Distribution Architectures in Shipboard Power Systems

In this paper, various power distribution architectures that can be implemented on a shipboard power system are investigated. The paper implements various distribution system architectures including; Radial AC, Medium Voltage DC and Zonal DC distribution systems on a reduced scale laboratory testbed. A detailed comparison among these architectures was conducted during simulated ship sailing and onshore operation as well as in emergency situations. The paper also identifies the pros and cons of the distribution system architectures under study. The conclusions were supported by simulation and initial experimental results. A case study of a shipboard power system encountering a heavy load featuring set of pulses loads was investigated. The implemented example system included a hybrid storage system involving batteries and super capacitors. The results show the effectiveness of each architecture as well as the importance of the real time energy management algorithm.