Standard-Cell, Open-Architecture Power Conversion Systems

This Final Report compiles all the work carried out at the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), corresponding to the "Standard-Cell, Open-Architecture Power Conversion Systems" project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). This project was purposefully aimed to develop a standardized hierarchical design and analysis methodology for modular power electronics conversion systems using as basis the ISO/OSI seven-layer reference model. The foundational ideas of this engineering vision came from the Power Electronics Building Block (PEBB), seeking to expand the usage of this concept while exploiting the numerous advantages offered by it, namely modularity, scalability, reconfiguration and reduced design cycles. The means to the end chosen was the actual embracing of the hierarchical nature of PEBB-based converters by applying it to the modeling approach, control software, and energy processing characterization of power electronics systems. The resultant two-dimensional hierarchical reference model pursues the complete analysis and design of power electronics systems, covering not only the electromagnetic, thermal and mechanical interactions from semiconductors up to complete power systems, but also their associated controls, modeling and communications at every hierarchy level. In order to achieve these objectives several tasks were identified and undertaken in this project. Specifically, several studies were conducted in order to fully characterize the energy processing functions observed in shipboard power systems, individually addressing the PEBB, power converter and power system levels. The PEBB level -- using a CPES built 33 kW PEBB -- was subjected to a complete study describing it across all defined hierarchies, i.e., energy processing, controls and modeling. Further, the complete design and evaluation of its digital controller (Hardware Manager) is also presented, thus fully characterizing the controls hierarchy at this level.