Co-Simulation of Electrical Propulsion and Power Systems in Direct Drive Applications

Electric propulsion has gained a lot of traction in spacecrafts. Among them, Hall Effect Thrusters (HETs) are widely used. Its operation involves several engineering domains including fluid and thermal dynamics and electrical engineering, not to mention the complicated physics of the discharge process. Moreover, Electrical Propulsion power needs make it a driver in the design of the spacecraft power system. Therefore, co-simulation of the electrical propulsion system alongside the electrical power system, including power generation, opens the door for system optimization and unveils interactions between the electrical power and propulsion systems. This is specially the case for the so-called Direct Drive (DD) architectures, in which the power from a solar array is directly fed to the HET without or with little power conversion stages. This paper presents an ECOSIM made model joining together ESA-PEPS libraires for Electrical power system and a subset of ESPSS propulsion libraries (ESA_EP_PIE). The models are used to size the power system for a given mission and to evaluate the interaction of Maximum Power Point Tracking methods with Direct Drive architectures.