The Zumwalt will, however, be the the Navy's first microgrid-based electric warship.
The DDG-1000 design includes plug-and-play advanced power electronics, multi-megawatt motor drives and cutting-edge automation and control capabilities that supplies electricity generated by disparate sources of energy (e.g., wind, solar, natural gas) to propulsion systems and electric weapons and sensors through a common distribution infrastructure.
Platts called this "the ultimate naval power T&D system." The Navy calls it the Next Generation Integrated Power Supply (NGIPS). Most people call it the "microgrid."
NGIPS is an enterprise approach for integrating power generation, propulsion and power distribution and management.
Like the conventional electric grid, NGIPS provides electricity produced from multiple sources of energy (e.g., wind, solar, natural gas) for the full range of a ship's electric loads and end-use devices. The key to NGIPS is a standardized power distribution infrastructure constructed with smaller, simpler, more affordable and more capable electronic "building blocks" that create the functional equivalent of a "wall plug" for future ship-side power demands like electromagnetic guns, free electron lasers and organic surveillance drones.
The Office of Naval Research considers NGIPS to be a critical enabler for the DDG 1000's "Navy Next" war-fighting capabilities, which the Navy has invested nearly $9 billion developing and the U.S. Government Accountability Office has described like so:
The DDG 1000 is a multimission surface ship designed to provide advanced land attack capability and contribute to military dominance in the shallow coastal waters known as the littorals. To meet its objectives, DDG 1000 will employ . . . an array of cutting-edge technologies, including a missile launch system lined in the ship's hull, an advanced gun system that fires long-range precision-guided munitions, and highly capable sensors integrated into the sides of a deckhouse made primarily of composite material—not steel . . .The Navy plans to achieve these advances while also reducing the crew size to less than half of the predecessor [class of destroyer] . . . through extensive computer automation.
The NGIPS platform is critical for clean energy, especially variable resources like wind power and solar photovoltaics. In states like California and Massachusetts, renewable energy systems interconnected with the electric grid have become pervasive. These high-penetration levels have put enormous pressure on the electric grid and created considerable doubts about the ability to interconnect more variable resources with the grid safely.
The solution is smaller, simpler, more affordable and more capable plug-and-play power electronics - e.g., inverters, rectifiers and power converters - that allow variable and distributed energy resources to interconnect with the electric grid seamlessly and safely. Currently, many of these power electronic components are expensive and require significant levels customized engineering.
