In the latter half of 1960's, the establishment of so-called automation regulations, i.e., regulations for automatic control of marine generators at night, caused generator automation equipment to appear on the market. And the "oil-shock" in 1973 increased the need for energy saving. This required optimization of the management of ship power plant and loads, so-called the power management.
Recently the needs of automation equipment users are for higher reliability of power distribution systems, operational ease, and centralized monitoring.
To meet the needs, Terasaki have recently released a new product, the basic concept of which is the distributed power control. This paper describes features of this control scheme and shows historical changes in switchboard arrangement.
2. What is the Distributed Control?
The generating plant control scheme is divided mainly into two types; distributed control and centralized control. The latter was so far the mainstream and this had been the case with Terasaki.
Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate centralized and distributed control systems.
As shown in Fig. 1, the centralized control is a method of control in which multiple generators are controlled by single automation equipment from a central location. This type of automation equipment is furnished with automatic synchronization, load sharing, voltage monitoring, frequency monitoring, and stand-by generator selection functions.
