Thruster motor start-up transient in an all-electric cruise-liner: numerical simulation and experimental assessment

Electromechanical transients in isolated power systems having large and complex structure are challenging phenomena to study due to the intrinsic nonlinearities and to the mutual interactions between the electrical components involved. The problem is faced in this paper of studying the electromechanical transient resulting from a sudden line connection of a thruster motor in a shipboard integrated power system of a cruise liner. This case study has been selected because direct-on-line thruster motor start-up is one of the most perturbing scenario for the shipboard power system voltage and frequency stability. The transient is reproduced by means of a complete system modeling in the Matlab-Simulink environment and results are assessed by comparison with measurements taken on the ship. The good accordance between simulation and experimental results proves the effectiveness of the proposed approach.