Harnessing solar energy during preferential tripping to supply non-essential loads in luxury vessels

This paper presents a ship electrical power system architecture that integrates solar photovoltaic (PV) energy for supplying the non-essential loads at the instant of preferential tripping. The shipping industry has to create and apply innovative measures for making the ship ‘greener' to comply with the increasing standards and regulations made by an international maritime organisation (IMO). A popular green shipping strategy is using renewable energy resources (RER) and solar energy plays an important role in making ships more eco-friendly. Despite this, the expectations of comfort and luxury are high for the passengers when they board a cruise ship or a luxury vessel. Therefore, maintaining indoor air quality and cabin comfort is very imperative. Hence continuous electrical supply for different non-essential loads such as air conditioning, several other entertainment and comfort equipment is significant in these vessels. Even though numerous projects that utilized solar energy that meet different energy needs of the ship are available, utilizing solar energy at the instant of preferential tripping of non-essential loads has not been done yet. A standalone solar PV system that meets the electrical demands of non-essential loads has been designed. A typical ship has been chosen with 5130-meter square (m2) of useful area for installing solar panels. For supplying the non-essential loads of 1312 kW during the period of preferential tripping requires installation of 196 solar panels occupying 372.4 m2 which are only 7.2% of total useful area that the ship can accommodate. It is also found that the weight of the total solar panels installed for preserving the non-essential loads is about 5.8 tons which are only 0.21% of the deadweight of the ship. Also, the weight of the associated 1295 battery packs for the designed PV system comes nearly 132 tons, which is about 6.46% of the ship's deadweight. The simulation results validate the proposed approach and are found to be feasible and satisfactory. The functioning of the proposed system can be integrated into the power management systems onboard. This paper also tackles some research possibilities and requirements in the area of onboard PV vessels.