A Shunt DC Electric Spring Control Strategy for MVDC Bus Voltage Stability Onboard AES

Background: The recent trend in the all-electric ship (AES) electrical systems, especially in military vessels, is to move towards medium voltage direct current (MVDC) distribution. Bus voltage instability is a major issue in direct current (DC) distribution systems. Nowadays, direct current electric springs (DCES) are extensively used in low-voltage direct current (LVDC) microgrids to address voltage instability issues. This paper extends the use of a shunt DCES to stabilize the bus voltage in an MVDC grid. The work proposes an addition to the MVDC onboard ship distribution system architecture, described in IEEE 1709, by integrating a shunt DCES with a novel control strategy to stabilize the bus voltage under various loading conditions, including propulsion motor (PM) and online pulsed power load (PPL). Methods: The shunt DCES is designed to provide current into the MVDC bus, which reduces the bus current ripple to attain a stable bus voltage with reduced ripple. A dual loop control with a battery management system (BMS) is proposed for the shunt DCES and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink. BMS is designed based on the state of charge (SOC) of the battery and bus current ripple extracted from the system's source and load side currents. The current supplied by the shunt DCES and the extracted ripple current validate the effectiveness of the proposed control. Total harmonic distortions (THDs) as a measure of voltage ripple of the MVDC bus voltage at different intervals are measured and compared for both systems, with and without shunt DCES. Results: It was observed that the shunt DCES could reduce the voltage ripple well below the permissible limit, which is 5% as per IEEE 1709. Conclusion: The proposed control strategy could attain a reduction of 68-85% in THD under peak to off-peak loading conditions with the addition of shunt DCES.