Shipboard Power Quality and VFD Effect

Abstract

Shipboard power generation and distribution system design and development must be in accordance with the applicable rules and regulations to ensure that power source characteristics are suitable for the intended ship service applications. The ship power system with variable frequency drive (VFD) generates electric noise in many different forms deteriorating the power quality in the ship service power distribution system. The VFD selection is very complex due to fact that shipboard islanded system‐level applications are often ignored during early stages of design. The shipboard power distribution systems require systematic power quality calculation and system level impact analysis related verification so that system level power quality is not compromised. The chapter presents an example to show how to calculate the harmonic distortion level and then apply various harmonic mitigating features to reduce the harmonic to IEEE‐519 acceptable level.