Multiagent Distributed Power Management of DC Shipboard Power Systems for Optimal Fuel Efficiency

Medium-voltage dc power systems have been recognized as a promising electrical architecture for marine vessels. Such shipboard power systems (SPSs) require advanced control architectures to ensure reliability and flexibility, as well as achieve fuel-efficient operation. With this regard, this article presents a multiagent distributed power management scheme to achieve voltage regulation and economic power-sharing of diesel generators (DGs) for optimal fuel efficiency in dc SPSs. Based on the power management signal, each DG will adjust its operating speed to minimize fuel oil consumption. All functions are realized in a distributed manner with only neighboring communications, which offers more reliability and flexibility compared to conventional centralized approaches. The proposed power management scheme is validated by the controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) experiment. A dc SPS test system is developed in the OPAL-RT-based real-time simulator. The B&R programmable logic controllers and network switches are set up to realize the multiagent-based distributed control. The CHIL experimental results under different operation conditions demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of the proposed method.