Power system and energy storage models for laser integration on naval platforms

High power solid state laser systems are being developed for advanced weapons and sensors for a variety of Department of Defense applications including naval surface combatants. The transient power and cooling requirements of these emerging technologies present significant challenges to the electric power distribution and thermal management systems, particularly for applications requiring back fit of the new systems onto existing platforms with limited electric power generation and cooling capacities. The University of Texas Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) and the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) have collaborated in the development of simulation models of ship power systems to evaluate and help guide the integration of pulsed laser loads onto existing ship platforms. Key to the success of these efforts is the definition of a suitable energy storage system to handle the effect of the transient load. This paper reports on the progress of detailed MatLab/Simulink models of a destroyer class ship service electric power distribution system that have been developed to evaluate the performance of battery, flywheel, and capacitor energy storage in support of laser weapons. The models allow the user to develop comparative studies of the three energy storage systems in regard to several relevant metrics that can be used for their discrimination. Examples of some of these results based on the simulations are given.