A cycle-based formulation for the simulation of multi time-scale systems — Application to the modeling of the storage system of a fully electric ferry.

Abstract This paper addresses the simulation of complex systems which consider phenomena with different time scales. Such problems are encountered on studies of electrical systems which try to take into account the simulation of the power converter and its control laws, over representative operating cycles of several hours. Moreover, when storage elements are integrated into a power chain, their aging may need the designer to consider larger time scales, which can then exceed a few years. It is the reason why most studies separate the time scales between the slow dynamics for the energetic, thermal and aging phenomena, and the fast ones to study the power converter and its control laws. This paper presents an original cycle-based and multi-rate method for the simulation of power systems with a wide range of time scales and with high mutual dependency between the fast and slow state variables. This method is applied to the supercapacitor energy storage system of a full-electric ferry. The proposed simulation results take into account at the same time the switching of the power converter and the aging of the supercapacitor, with a reduction of the computational effort greater than 1 0 5. In other words, while a full calculation of the problem takes 10 centuries on a personal computer, the proposed method permits to have the same result in only 15 days. Highlights • A simulation framework of multi-time scale modeling. • It relies on cycle-based formulation of the system operation. • Method applied to the energy powertrain of a full-electric ferry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]