Satellite power system simulation

In order to furnish a useful tool for the power system preliminary sizing, a satellite power system simulator was developed. The simulator has a modular structure where each module implements the mathematical model of the system components (solar array, battery, voltage regulators etc.). The software allows both the verification of the rating co-ordination of all those parts composing the power system itself, once the mission is assigned, and the analysis of the time behavior of the electronic regulators during transients. Therefore, by using this simulator, any power system architecture can be easily analyzed. In this paper only the electrical preliminary sizing of the components is treated without considering power system mass and battery thermal calculations. As example of the capabilities of the tool the results of two simulations are reported; in the first, the transient behavior of a sequential switching shunt regulator (S3R) is analyzed. In the second simulation the power system of a LEO satellite is simulated in order to verify the rating co-ordination in case of unregulated bus voltage. The tool was developed within MATLAB/SIMULINK environment.