Analysis of energy storage solutions for ship maneuvering in ports

Abstract

The recent regulation about pollution reduction in port areas promotes the development of electric ships, at least to operate with no fuel during approach and departure. The paper presents an analysis of different energy storage alternatives for the case of power supply of a ferry during docking and undocking manoeuvres. Considering that the use of batteries does not fully comply with the maritime conditions, short-term energy storage technologies are studied as an alternative, specifically flywheels and supercapacitors. After the analysis of these systems, based on models parametrized from prototypes tested in the lab, neither of them is suitable for the case study. However, the use of a battery/supercapacitor hybrid energy storage provides a techno-economic feasible solution, especially under the situation of dimensioning the complete system according to the consumption profile of the ferry.