Simulation of a zonal electric distribution system for shipboard applications

This paper describes a DC zonal electric distribution system (ZEDS) architecture that is being developed for future shipboard applications. This system includes alternator/rectifier power sources, a DC distribution system, and distributed DC/AC inverters for zonal AC loads. System stability and fault tolerance are of major concern. A detailed computer simulation has been developed that addresses these issues. This simulation is based on an automated state model generation algorithm wherein the computer automatically establishes the system state model from a topological system description. It is shown that the system dynamics stiffness imposes a significant computational burden. Methods of automatic model partitioning and model-order reduction are presented that increase the computational speed by several orders of magnitude