Hierarchical distributed MPC method for hybrid energy management: A case study of ship with variable operating conditions

The energy management (EM) strategy, power controller, and local controller of the EM system are coupled, and together affect hybrid power system performance. To achieve coordinated control and multi-objective optimisation of a hybrid power system, a hierarchical distributed control method was proposed, and a validation study was conducted based on model-in-the-loop simulations (MILs) and hardware-in-the-loop simulations (HILs). First, a real-time EM strategy based on a combination of forward dynamic programming (FDP) and model predictive control (MPC) methods was proposed to optimise the power allocation for multiple energy sources. Second, a distributed controller based on a consistency algorithm was proposed to coordinate the differences in the characteristics of multiple energy sources. A dynamic virtual impedance-based droop controller was designed for dynamic tracking of the reference power. The performance of the three-layer control structure was comprehensively validated through MILs and HILs. The results show that the dynamic virtual impedance-based droop control method can track the nonlinear reference power with control deviation within 5 %. The distributed controller is able to keep the bus voltage stable. The global control accuracy of the DC bus voltage is improved by 18.08 %, and the battery current global fluctuations is reduced by 17.4 %. The real-time FDP-MPC-based EM strategy can achieve 99.89 % energy savings and emissions reduction compared to the global DP-MPC-based method, with greater robustness, real-time performance. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for real-time applications and can achieve hierarchical and multi-objective optimal control of the hybrid power system.