A Multi-Agent System Framework for Real-Time Electric Load Management in MVAC All-Electric Ship Power Systems

All-electric ship power systems include less generation capacity and smaller rotating inertia compared with large power systems. The systems include large portions of nonlinear loads and dynamic loads, which may reduce the stability margin. Moreover, various operational constraints, such as system frequency constraint, motor voltage constraint and dynamic cable constraint, need to be satisfied in operational real time. Further, pulse loads draw very high short-time power in an intermittent way, which may significantly deteriorate the power quality of the system. In this paper, a novel multi-agent system cooperative controller for a medium voltage AC (MVAC) system of all-electric ship power systems is developed to balance load and generation in real time while satisfying system's operational constraints and considering load priorities. The new method coordinates the pulse load and the propulsion load to reduce the impact of pulse load changes on the power quality of all-electric ship power systems. The dynamic behavior of the new method is evaluated using case studies in PSCAD software.