A ship will not go dark even if central control fails – new solution revolutionizes vessel electrical grids

A new study from the University of Vaasa, Finland, introduces a pioneering power management strategy that prevents ship blackouts

University of Vaasa

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Timo Alho

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Credit: Photo: University of Vaasa

The shipbuilding industry is on the verge of a major leap forward. Timo Alho's doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa introduces a pioneering power management strategy that prevents ship blackouts. In Alho's management principle, the vessel's electrical equipment is capable of independently supporting the ship's grid without centralised commands. This makes the vessel's power systems significantly more fault-tolerant than before.

The maritime industry's green transition is driving vessels towards modern direct current (DC) networks, but the control strategies for them have lagged behind. Traditionally, shipboard power management has relied on a centralised automation system that continuously calculates the available power.

– The problem is that the centralised system is slow and rigid. If a ship's generator fails suddenly, the central control cannot react in time. The remaining generators are easily overloaded, resulting in a blackout, explains Alho.

Distributed intelligence replaces micromanagement

Alho’s management principle reverses the conventional philosophy. Instead of one central control system micromanaging all the equipment, the 'intelligence' is distributed. The central control only provides the operational boundaries – a "sandbox," as Alho calls it – within which the devices can operate independently.

Devices, such as the main propulsion or battery inverters, directly monitor the grid's DC voltage, which is directly proportional to the generator load.

– If a generator drops off the grid, the voltage collapses. This is an immediate signal to all devices to 'throttle down' their power, or for the batteries to support the grid. This all happens autonomously in milliseconds, without an active command, says Alho.

The result, from a power management perspective, is a significantly safer, simpler, and more flexible system. It is also easier to expand, as new equipment does not need to be complexly programmed into the central system. The method is based on existing standard technology, so its adoption depends mainly on a change in design philosophy.

Although the research directly serves the shipbuilding industry and shipping companies, its applications are broad. The management principle is particularly well-suited for applications demanding extreme reliability and autonomous operation.

– The management strategy is especially suited for environments where unforeseen situations can surprise a centralised system and cause problems – such as in space. When the system is inherently fault-tolerant, it doesn't need a human or a complex state machine monitoring it, Alho notes.

Dissertation

Alho, Timo (2025) Variable Voltage-based Power Management of DC Microgrids: With Focus on Shipboard Power Systems. Acta Wasaensia 574. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Vaasa.

Publication PDF

Public defence

The doctoral dissertation of Timo Alho, MSc (Tech), "Variable Voltage-based Power Management of DC Microgrids: With Focus on Shipboard Power Systems," will be publicly examined on Tuesday, 25 November 2025 at 12:00 (UTC+2) in the Nissi Auditorium, University of Vaasa, Finland.

It is possible to participate in the defence also online: 
https://uwasa.zoom.us/j/61151520062?pwd=E90udY8H3f3GqbY943Jkam4Xc9hYoP.1 
Password: 991814

The opponent will be Associate Professor Navid Bayati (University of Southern Denmark) and the custos will be Professor Hannu Laaksonen.

Further information

Timo Alho, tel. +358 50 535 7960, timo.alho@alhoengineering.fi

Timo Alho earned his MSc (Technology) from the University of Vaasa in 2008. He works as an entrepreneur and as a teacher at VAMK, Vaasa University of Applied Sciences. One patent was also created during Alho's doctoral research.

 

Blending art, agriculture and governance at Oxford

Inspired by Detroit's resilience, U-M student earns prestigious Rhodes Scholarship

University of Michigan

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ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan student Yumna Dagher has been named a 2025 Rhodes Scholar, one of 32 Americans chosen to win scholarships to Oxford University.

 

A recent graduate with double majors in English and the Environment, she became the 33rd U-M Rhodes Scholar since the awards were established in 1902.

 

"I have always wanted to pursue graduate studies, but found myself at a juncture—the possibility of a fully funded graduate education seemed far away," Dagher said. "Now, heading to Oxford, I hope to gain the theoretical grounding and interdisciplinary training necessary to build projects that honor the kinds of relational practices I witnessed on campus and within Detroit environmental spaces, where stewardship becomes a vessel for building collective climate futures." 

 

The Rhodes Scholarship is a prestigious award that provides complete financial support for outstanding students from around the world to study at the University of Oxford. Its purpose is to develop leaders who are committed to public service and international understanding, promoting peace through a diverse, global community of scholars.

 

The 32 Rhodes Scholars selected this year will begin their graduate studies in October 2026. They will join dozens of international Rhodes Scholars from around the world. Many of those international scholars also studied at U.S. colleges and universities but, as non-U.S. citizens, applied through their home countries.

 

Dagher will pursue graduate degrees in both nature, society and environmental governance and in visual, material and museum anthropology. 

 

"I want to work at the intersection of culture, cooperative economics and sustainable food systems," she said. "And alongside work in these fields, develop art and writing practice as a printmaker, cartoonist and poet."

 

At U-M, Dagher completed her work, establishing a record combining academic achievement with leadership in sustainability and the arts. Her academic efforts resulted in a senior honors thesis in creative writing, which received campus awards. She continues her work in the arts by collaborating with an arts alliance to establish a neighborhood arts hub that connects creative programming directly to the community.

 

In her current role as a Dean's Fellow in the LSA dean's office, Dagher focuses on implementing college-wide sustainability initiatives and supports projects that enrich undergraduate education. She continues her work in the arts by collaborating with a creative alliance to establish a neighborhood cultural hub that connects creative programming directly to the community.

 

Campus farming, local collaboration

 

In 2024, Dagher began work at U-M's Campus Farm. She collaborated with student-farmers on fieldwork and taught in the refugee garden. The garden, co-administered with resettlement agency Jewish Family Services, gave gardeners an opportunity to grow culturally familiar crops and maintain food traditions after resettlement. This work grounded her understanding of land as the basis for community building. 

 

With fellow interns, Dagher supported the 2024 growing season, growing thousands of pounds of organically grown produce for the U-M dining halls and community members. She also supported the Mobile Farm Stand, a student-led, pop-up market that brings locally grown, sustainable produce directly to campus.

 

Her commitment deepened during a visit to Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit, a Black-led collective. There, Dagher learned from the farm's leader that agriculture is not just about growing food, but about creating a viable future, reinforcing her belief in environmental stewardship as a means of community resilience. 

 

Once returning to campus, Dagher went back to a previous role, leading U-M's Sustainable Food Program. With her team, they secured and repurposed an unused campus café, transforming it into a climate resilience programming space, hosting workshops and meals through the Rooting for Change Cafe series and promoting a student-led transition for campus sustainability.

 

"At the center of UMSFP was our people," she said. "We understood the work as the relationships we built—connections made stronger through collaboration. I hope to bring this ethic to the Rhodes community, contributing with the deep grounding I've gained in Detroit where the work is survival. 

 

"In turn, I want to learn from peers whose solutions emerge from different geographies: organizers confronting resource extraction, scholars exploring cross-disciplinary governance and leaders stewarding with care. Together, we can braid these perspectives—my grounding in land-based organizing and their diverse cultural and political insights—to create cross-border models of resilience."

 

Scientists quantitatively identify main causes of Russian once-in-a-century heatwave

Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Bar chart showing the partial temperature differences caused by individual terms and the sum of partial temperature differences derived from the CFRAM-A calculations.

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Credit: Lianlian Xu

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) states that the global surface temperature has risen markedly since the pre-industrial era. This warming has led to more frequent and intense extreme heat events over most continents. In summer 2010, western Russia was hit by a record-breaking heatwave, with the region experiencing the warmest summer since at least 1880 and numerous cities recording all-time high temperatures. Furthermore, in the context of global warming, future midlatitude heatwaves analogous to the 2010 event will become even more extreme, with the heatwave intensity increasing by about 8.4°C in western Russia. Thus, unraveling the physical processes involved in the 2010 western Russian heatwave is a matter of considerable concern within the scientific community.

Previous studies have elucidated that this extraordinary event in 2010 mainly resulted from internal natural variability, which includes but is not limited to the processes associated with El Niño to La Niña transition, the intensified Arctic dipole mode, the enhanced moisture–temperature coupling strength, high-latitude land warming, and increased aerosol concentrations. However, there is still some debate regarding the respective roles of dynamical and radiative processes in driving the 2010 western Russian heatwave.

A new study published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters by a research team led by Professor Song Yang at Sun Yat-sen University, China, reveals that surface dynamics and aerosol processes were the key drivers behind the extraordinary 2010 heatwave. This study provides a new quantitative perspective on the record-breaking western Russian heatwave.

"To date, attribution studies have relied primarily on sensitivity experiments conducted with climate models, which often lead to large uncertainties in quantitative results due to considerable model biases. The coupled atmosphere–surface climate feedback response analysis method with the effects of aerosols incorporated (CFRAM-A) is an efficient, model-free approach for quantitative attributions of extreme temperature events. We applied this method to break down the surface warming in western Russia in 2010 into contributions from individual radiative and dynamical processes," says the first author, Dr. Lianlian Xu.

"Understanding the physical and dynamical origin of regional climate extremes remains a major challenge in our effort to anticipate the occurrences and mitigate the adverse impacts of these extremes," adds the corresponding author, Prof. Song Yang.

According to this study, the surface warming over western Russia in 2010 can be primarily attributed to the effects of surface dynamics (95%), followed by atmospheric dynamics (49%), clouds (19%), and water vapor (6%), which are partially counterbalanced by aerosol-induced cooling (−64%). Further analysis revealed that the total aerosol cooling was predominantly governed by organic carbon (78%), black carbon (36%), and sulfate (−21%).

This research offers a new perspective for understanding the mechanisms of heatwaves globally and is crucial for improving the predictive capability of such extreme events. The framework presented in this paper not only advances understanding of extreme weather event mechanisms but also underscores the complex interplay between dynamical and radiative factors in driving record-breaking heatwaves.

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Journal

Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.aosl.2025.100724 

Article Title

Quantitative attribution analysis of dynamical and radiative processes to the record-breaking western Russian heatwave

 

The riddle of rising extreme heat days in Europe: Remote “triggers” and local “amplifiers”

Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Time series of summer hot days in Europe derived from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and E-OBS datasets.

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Credit: Lianlian Xu

Extreme heat event is becoming a "silent killer" in Europe, igniting wildfires while quietly driving up mortality rates. Over the past few decades, summer heatwaves in Europe have grown increasingly severe, with temperatures rising at twice the global average. The deadly 2003 heatwave remains deeply unsettling: it directly caused approximately 30 000 deaths and resulted in agricultural losses in Europe of up to €13 billion. This critical situation has made the driving mechanisms and impacts of extreme heat events in Europe a key focus of scientific research.

A new study conducted by Professor Song Yang and Dr. Lianlian Xu from Sun Yat-sen University, China, reveals a significant interdecadal shift in European summer hot days around 1998. These results have recently been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Multiple observational datasets collectively reveal that the number of hot days (NHD) in Europe show a significant interdecadal increase from 1979 to 2022. Analysis of the underlying mechanisms shows that this interdecadal intensification can be attributed to the combined influence of large-scale atmospheric circulation and regional land–atmosphere processes.

The period from 1979 to 2022 saw a transition in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) from a negative to a positive phase, which can generate a Rossby wave train, resulting in an anomalous equivalent barotropic high-pressure structure and descending motions over Europe, providing a favorable condition for the NHD. On the other hand, soil moisture decreased over Europe, which intensified the land–air coupling strength and consequently resulted in enhanced hot days.

"Summer NHD is typically associated with a high-pressure system and deep descending motions. Such an atmospheric circulation pattern inhibits precipitation but enhances evapotranspiration, consequently leading to reduced soil moisture. That is, local soil moisture is governed by large-scale atmospheric circulations, which can be modulated by remote climate signals. Based on a dynamic adjustment approach, the atmospheric circulation anomalies over Europe linked to the AMO phase transition reduce regional soil moisture by approximately 35%," explains Prof. Song Yang.

Few studies have been conducted to quantify the contribution of remote signals to local soil moisture. This study provides a new insight into the linkage between the ocean, soil moisture, and hot days, which is essential for understanding extreme heat events worldwide.

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Journal

Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.aosl.2025.100732 

Article Title

Unveiling remote and local drivers for the interdecadal shift of European hot days