Power Electronics and Drives: Applications to Modern Ship Propulsion Systems

Electrically propelled ships gained popularity by the early 20th century, with the rapid development of submarines and mediumcapacity container ships, mainly using dc motors [1]. Synchronous ac motors have since been employed for naval propulsion systems, but due to the restricted operation of the available power electronic devices at that time, these configurations were too expensive and unreliable, and they featured poor performance in terms of speed and torque control [2]. Improvements in power electronics devices and drive control schemes as well as the development of high-efficiency multiphase induction and synchronous motors have pushed the advancement of electric ship propulsion systems and applications [3]-[7].