Patent ID: 7656060

Claim:
A method of operating a power system, the power system including a plurality of generator sets and a bus, each generator set including at least a generator and an engine, the method comprising: monitoring at least one generator set that is disconnected from the bus; monitoring one of the bus and at least one reference generator set that is connected to the bus; supplying, to a control device, information associated with the operating state of each of the generator sets and information associated with the bus; determining a relative frequency mismatch between the frequency of at least one of the bus and the reference generator set and the frequency of the disconnected generator to generate a frequency speed bias for the disconnected generator set; determining a relative phase mismatch between the phase of at least one of the bus and the reference generator set and the phase of the disconnected generator set to generate a phase speed bias for the disconnected generator set; adding the frequency speed bias and the phase speed bias to form a total speed bias; tuning the total speed bias to cause the frequency speed bias and the phase speed bias to combine in a complementary manner; and connecting the disconnected generator set to the bus when the voltage, frequency, and phase of the disconnected generator set are within a permissible range of the voltage, frequency, and phase of at least one of the bus and the reference generator set.