Power-HIL Implementation of Active Damping Control on a Passenger Transport DC Vessel

In the maritime industry, environmental regulations are driving a rapid shift toward electric and green propulsion systems. In vessels adopting the DC technology, an insufficient design integration (particularly between control systems and filtering stages) can cause underdamped behavior of the DC bus voltage. The latter becomes critical when main bus protections are triggered or loads malfunction (specifically in the case of vital loads). To mitigate these risks and preserve power system stability, one solution is the integration of the Active Damping (AD) function. The latter transiently increases the system damping factor, thus avoiding uncontrolled voltage oscillations after perturbations. The paper aims to validate Active Damping in a Power-Hardware-In-the-Loop (P-HIL) environment, specifically modeling a DC-powered passenger vessel. P-HIL tests demonstrate the critical role of AD in managing vital loads, like the electric steering gear. The results also show how the P-HIL implementation can close the gap between design and testing of electric DC vessels.