Dynamic Modeling and Reliable Operation of All-Electric Ships with Small Modular Reactors and Battery Energy Systems

The emerging Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology can potentially provide a reliable source of energy for All-Electric Ships (AES) with reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The successful drive of the electric propulsion systems in SMR-based AES needs high maneuverability in the supply of power, which is however constrained by the physical and safety limits of the SMR. SMR may not be able to precisely match the supply/demand on its own, especially during rapid load changes such as pulse loads. An effective solution is to leverage a battery energy storage system (BESS) as the primary source of frequency control to compensate for the remaining mismatches between the demand and supply. In order to increase the reliability of SMR-based AES, in this paper, a reliable operational scheme based on the dynamic modeling of the SMR-BESS-AES is proposed. Simulation results show that the SMR-BESS-AES system is capable of providing flexible operations in the presence of highly variable loads under different scenarios, such as ship acceleration, deceleration, and under pulse loads or severe weather conditions.