System Protection for Power Electronic Building Block Based DC Distribution Systems

MAHAJAN, NIKHIL RAVINDRA. System Protection for Power Electronic Building Block Based DC Distribution Systems. (Under the direction of Mesut E Baran) The purpose of this research has been to develop an agent based protection and reconfiguration scheme for power electronic building block based (PEBB) DC distribution systems. One of the foremost applications would be in the new zonal DC distribution on naval ships. The research involves the design of an agent based protection scheme which uses the PEBBs for current limiting and circuit breaking purposes. Considerations are given to reduce the system downtime under fault conditions, allow proper coordination and provide backup protection. The research also involves the design of a reconfiguration management scheme based on collaborative agents. The collaboration ensures that the reconfiguration is achieved at a global level, enhancing the system survivability under the conditions of multiple faults and damages. The coordination ensures that only the faulted part of the system is isolated and the reconfiguration makes sure that the power to the healthy part of the system is supplied continuously. The reconfiguration management also performs load shedding if the generation does not meet the load demand of the reconfigured system due to a fault or damage in the generator.