Dynamic Droop Voltage Control in Zonal DC Microgrids Supplying High-Power Pulsed Loads

The rising development in power electronics converters is revolutionizing the shipboard applications. In this context, the zonal DC distribution is the enabling technology to ensure a step beyond towards efficient power usage, flexibility and resilience, especially in presence of high-power pulsed loads. The paper explores a zonal DC voltage control strategy to guarantee the dynamic collaboration of different sources in the feeding of critical onboard loads. In particular, Diesel generators, batteries, and supercapacitors are interfaced to the DC bus for supplying pulsed loads. In accordance with inherent physical behavior and control settings, each source can provide its power quota with a specific dynamic contribution (i.e. fast, medium, slow). Based on this, a dynamic droop control can automatically calibrate the action of each DC-DC interface converter, in order to both assure load supply and correct behavior over time (i.e. discharge-charge evolution). Numerical simulations will demonstrate the real-time effectiveness in managing the sources, while ensuring the feeding of high-dynamics load in shipboard DC microgrids.