Analysis and Comparison of Electric Ship Integrated Power System Architectures via Harmonic Metrics

For the safe and efficient operation of a power system, the power quality must be maintained at a high level. In the paper, we discuss a new metric known as Harmonic Similarity (HS) which provides an understanding of the distribution of the disturbances in a system and uses that knowledge to strategically place filters at the most ideal nodes in the system. The work described in this paper focuses on the effects of applying known disturbances to three different electric ship IPS architectures developed in the new VTB Pro medium-voltage, lower-voltage, and medium-voltage/high-frequency. After analyzing the a traditional power quality index and the new metric at various nodes of interest in each architecture, it was determined that each architecture has a unique vulnerability to the same type of disturbance, yet the proposed metric successfully indicates the optimal filter location for each of them. It is concluded that HS is a valuable tool for both proper assessment and comparison of similar power systems and for developing effective and efficient filtering schemes.