Stability analysis and control design for an all-electric ship MVDC power distribution system using a passivity based stability criterion and power hardware-in-the-loop simulation

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) simulation techniques in the stability analysis and control design of a notional MVDC distribution system on an all-electric ship. PHIL simulation provides the capability to split a complex multi-converter system into a software simulated portion and hardware portion at a power interface. Using this technique, a detailed system interaction study is performed on a notional MVDC distribution system such that system level stability issues may be addressed early in the hardware development. System stability is evaluated according to the recently proposed Passivity Based Stability Criterion. An impedance measurement technique is used to identify the system bus impedance for determination of whether the system is passive and, therefore, stable. The stability information obtained from the PHIL experiment is then used to design a stabilizing controller using a Positive Feed-Forward control technique to ensure overall system performance.