Multi-agent system-based real-time load management for NG IPS ships in high/medium voltage level

Navy shipboard power systems have limited generation capacity and include a large portion of dynamic loads and high-energy weapon loads, which can overload the generators easily. The power generation and the load demand of the system should be balanced while satisfying the system's operating constraints in real-time to make the system operate normally. This paper presents a multi-agent system for the next generation integrated power system (NG IPS) in high/medium voltage level to coordinate a group of agents to cooperatively achieve the real-time load management objectives. The generator agent layer and load agent layer are designed to integrate a group of generators, propulsion loads, and DC zones into the multi-agent system. The cooperative control protocol is developed based on the proposed artificial potential function to achieve the group goals in real-time. The simulation results show that the developed technique achieves the real-time load management objectives.