A hierarchical optimal control strategy for power management of hybrid power systems in all electric ships applications

This paper deals with the optimal control of hybrid power systems (HPS) for all electric ships (AES) targeting military applications to support critical missions such as weapon or aircraft launches. The optimal control of HPS manages the power flow from the energy storage device and power sources to ensure mission effectiveness, namely, meet the pulse power demands as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The real-time control is a key requirement due to the on-demand nature of the problem. This requirement, along with the nonlinear and large scale HPS dynamics, long look-ahead horizon, safety constraints and load disturbances, makes the control problem challenging. In this paper we leverage the dynamic properties of HPS and propose a hierarchical control strategy for the power management of the HPS. The key merit of the proposed approach is that both the long term optimal power demand planning and short term disturbance rejection can be solved in real-time without computational delay. A case study using the HPS model illustrates the real-time computational efficiency and mission effectiveness of the proposed method.