Comparing point of use power quality to system level power quality in a shipboard MVDC distribution system

Abstract

The US Navy has specified stringent component based performance criteria for interconnecting electrical system devices into a shipboard distribution system. The performance criteria include power quality and harmonic content at the generation, distribution and load. The distribution system is designed to provide a high level of power quality. At the same time, the end-use loads, especially critical loads, are looking at the shipboard power distribution as a low power quality system and may be overdesigned to account for that. This paper reviews the MVDC distribution network as a system, rather than a collection of individually specified components, and presents the trade-offs between point-of-use power quality enhancement filtering, and maintaining a high system-wide level power quality.