This new freedom of being able to control each power source totally independently opens up numerous ways of optimizing fuel consumption.
[2] On land, the solar panels on several buildings in Sweden are connected via DC to smooth production and consumption, bypassing the AC grid and its inverters.
[3] The biggest potential for fuel savings lies in the ease with which energy storage devices, such as batteries or super capacitors, can be added to the system.
ABB has proposed a solution for protecting the DC distribution system using a combination of fuses and controlled turn-off semiconductor power devices.
Because all energy-producing components have controllable switching devices, the fault current can be blocked much faster than is possible with traditional circuit breakers with associated protection relays.
These protection devices come with a certain price tag, but the cost is justified thanks to the mitigation of any potential damage to a critical piece of equipment, or expensive system downtime and losses in production resulting from a fault.
This enables the overall system to reconfigure the behavior of the DC breaker switch within certain predefined boundaries and according to applied ship rules.
The fast opening time of a solid-state breakers limits the fault current considerably and minimizes the negative impact on the load.
Approval of a closed bus requires validation of the fault tolerance of the connected system, including live short-circuit testing of worst-case failure modes.