Investigating the Impact of Pulsed Power Charging Demands on Shipboard Power Quality

The impact of pulsed power loads on shipboard power systems need to be properly determined to prevent pulsed loads from causing unacceptable power quality deviations, interference with other loads and degradation of overall system performance. This paper uses a high fidelity modeling and simulation approach to investigate the impact of real and reactive power, pulse ramp rate, pulse duration and frequency of occurrence of the pulsed power load. For this purpose, a notional shipboard power system, modeled in a real-time digital simulator, is used. Most pulsed loads on shipboard systems are not fed directly from the prime power system but via an energy storage system. This energy storage system in turn is interfaced with the shipboard prime power system typically through an electronic front-end charging circuit. In order to evaluate the impact of pulsed loads, existing power quality standards (related to voltage transients, harmonic distortions, and frequency variations) are applied.