Safety-critical electrical power distribution

摘要

The present invention relates to a power supply system 100 for power distribution to one or more loads 102 in a safety-critical power supply network such as in an aircraft. The power supply system 100 comprises power sources 104a-c, a power bus, which may be a split power bus 106a-c, and a distributed control system. The distributed control system comprises a central controller 108 coupled to bus modules 110 through a data bus 112. Bus modules 110 include bus controllers 114 that are operable to connect respective power sources 104 to the power bus 106. Electrical contact units 116a-f may be operated to connect or disconnect the power sources and loads to or from the power bus 106a-c and the bus modules 110 to each other. The bus modules 110 may ignore instructions from the central controller 108 if they cannot be safely executed, and may also default to a fail safe mode and operate in isolation. Use of such a distributed control system enables simple modular expansion of a power supply network without compromising overall power supply network safety.