Electrical Load Analysis for Shipboard Power Systems Using Load Survey Data

Electric load analysis is an important task in early new stage for design of shipboard power systems (SPSs). The installation generation capacity onboard depends on the accurate result of the analysis, which significantly affects the system economic and secure operations. In the traditional electrical load analysis, the demand factor is often obtained from engineering experiences which may lead to inaccurate analysis results. In order to obtain better results, a methodology for electrical load analysis in SPSs is proposed in this article. The load analysis spreadsheet is adopted to find the power consumption of key electric loads in SPSs. The actual power consumptions of selected loads are collected by intelligent meters. The statistical analysis is then performed to find the critical parameter of each selected load in the load analysis under different operating conditions based on the power measurement of field test and load analysis is performed for estimating system power demand accordingly. The large practical maritime vessel power systems are selected for numerical analysis to ensure the performance of the proposed method. The proposed method has been adopted by local ship builders in Taiwan to better understand the load characteristics in shipboard power systems to support various functions of system planning and operation in a more effective manner.