Dynamically Coupled Process Control and Power Management for Shipboard Power and Energy System Applications

Small power systems are often used in support of broader systems like factories, climate control, and electric warships. Aggressive operation of the power systems often creates power shortfalls, which can be studied and controlled by assigning a value of lost load. However, this formulation is typically not sufficient to cover the potential interactions between the power system and the “process controller” that supervises the overall system and creates the load demand. For example, if a load demand for a device is not met, it will re-occur rather than just disappear. This paper formulates a general partition of the system control into a process controller which proposes actions, and a power manager which provides feedback on the feasibility of those actions. The two modules communicate via a defined interface to agree on a set of feasible actions that best accomplish the tasks within the limits of a power system. An electric warship is used as an example to demonstrate this setup, which can be used to operate power systems and to generate representative load profiles for use in evaluating candidate designs.