Shipboard Control System Supported by Energy Storage Sizing to Meet the MIL-STD-1399 Limits for Pulsed Power Loads

This article addresses the new pulsed power load requirements for shipboard power systems introduced in the 2018 revision of the Military Standard 1399 Section 300, Part 1. With the number of pulsed loads increasing onboard modern ships, the ac distribution bus is susceptible to voltage and frequency abnormalities due to the limited inertia of the synchronous generators powering the ship. In this article, the strict limits imposed by the Military Standard 1399 are met with a system-level solution and a novel sizing method for the energy storage system (ESS). A targeted control system ensures that the power delivered by the ac bus has smooth transients, within the limits set by the military standard, thus reducing the stress on the shipboard power distribution system and the generators. A novel ESS sizing algorithm is proposed to identify the minimum number of supercapacitors for a given set of control parameters. The proposed control system is simulated and experimentally validated on a laboratory testbed built with silicon carbide (SiC) power converters managed by field programmable gate array (FPGA) control boards.