Hardware-in-the-Loop Validation of Control Parameters for MVDC Shipboard Power Systems

Power-electronics-based Medium Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) shipboard power systems, consisting of several interconnected feedback-controlled switching converters, suffer from potential degradation of stability induced by negative incremental resistances due to the presence of constant power loads (CPLs). Several bus stabilizing control approaches have been presented in the past. In this work a novel Control Parameter tuning procedure, applicable to various control approaches, is introduced and implemented in LabView. The main features of the Control parameter tuning include the implementation of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method and the interface with the FPGAs, where the control methods are implemented. The on-line optimization procedure allows the fair comparison of the different control algorithms. Test are carried out for a shipboard power system based on the IEEE 1709 standard, using the Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulation setup together with the Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). The test shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the PSO to perform the on-line tuning of different controllers and enable a fair comparison between them.