With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) rising interest in lunar surface operations and deep space exploration, there is a growing need to move from traditional ground-based mission operations to more autonomous vehicle level operations. In lunar surface operations, there are periods of time where communications with ground-based mission control could not occur, forcing vehicles and a lunar base to completely operate independent of the ground. For deep space exploration missions, communication latency times increase to greater than 15 minutes making real-time control of critical systems difficult, if not near impossible. These challenges are driving the need for an autonomous power control system that has the capability to manage power and energy. This will ensure that critical loads have the necessary power to support life systems and carry out critical mission objectives. This paper presents a flexible, hierarchical, distributed control methodology that enables autonomous operation of smart grids and can integrate into a higher level autonomous architecture.
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