Investigation of Scaling Laws of Modular Multilevel Converters for Sizing Breaker-less MVDC Architectures

摘要

Medium voltage direct current (MVDC) systems are attractive solutions for the development of Integrated Power Systems (IPS) of next generation US Navy all electric ships. An important ongoing Smart Ship Systems Design (S3D) based study is to assess benefits of breaker-less fault current limiting MVDC architectures. Owing to the notional nature of such power distribution systems, the actual physical attributes of equipment utilized remains relatively unknown, making simulation studies at various combinations of power/voltage/current ratings challenging. To address this, on-going and future work aims to investigate scaling laws and related governing parameters that provide verifiable physical properties data. Such scaling laws are expected to play a vital role in performing comparative analysis and feasibility assessments between the MVDC breaker-less and other competing architectures for next generation warships. This paper proposes a systematic approach to calculate power densities for individual components.