Power Monitor

Description

The Power Monitor aggregates electrical metrics from a connected power bus, providing a consolidated view of the power system state. It reports generation, consumption, storage levels, and fault status by querying all components on the bus each simulation step. The monitor also tracks power transfer across interconnects linking multiple buses.

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Example Use Cases

• Power Budget Tracking: Monitor real-time power generation and consumption to verify margin throughout a mission.
• Battery State Monitoring: Track aggregate charge and capacity across all batteries on the bus.
• Fault Detection: Detect fuse trips and track cumulative fault counts for anomaly investigation.
• Multi-Bus Systems: Monitor power flow between interconnected buses during docked operations or hive configurations.

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Module Implementation

Power Aggregation

The monitor iterates over all components connected to the power bus and sums their contributions. For each component with a power node model, the net power is accumulated:

$$P_{\text{net}}=\sum _i{P}_{\text{node},i}$$

The maximum current observed across all nodes is also tracked:

$$I_{\text{max}}=\max \left(I_{\text{in},i},I_{\text{out},i}\right)\forall i$$

Power generation is computed by summing the nominal power of all power sources on the bus. Power consumption is then derived as:

$$P_{\text{consumed}}=\left|P_{\text{net}}-P_{\text{generated}}\right|$$

Storage Metrics

For all batteries on the bus, the monitor sums the current charge and total capacity:

$$Q_{\text{storage}}=\sum _j{Q}_j,C_{\text{total}}=\sum _j{C}_j$$

where $Q_j$ is the charge and $C_j$ is the capacity of each battery in Amp-hours.

Fuse Monitoring

The monitor counts the number of fuses currently in a tripped state. It also maintains a cumulative count of fuses that have blown during the simulation by detecting fuse blow events as they occur.

Interconnect Power Transfer

For power interconnects owned by the monitored bus, the power transfer is computed from the local terminal:

$$P_{\text{transfer}}=-V_{\text{in}}\cdot I_{\text{in}}$$

A positive value indicates power flowing into this bus from another bus; a negative value indicates power leaving. An interconnect is considered actively transferring when the local current exceeds a noise threshold of 1 μA.

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Assumptions/Limitations

• The monitor only reports metrics for components connected to the assigned power bus.
• Power consumption is derived from the difference between net power and generation, which may include transient imbalances.
• Battery metrics report aggregate values and do not distinguish between individual battery states.
• Interconnect power transfer is measured from the local terminal only; the peer bus should use its own monitor for its perspective.
• The fuse trip count is cumulative and persists across the simulation; it is not reset automatically.