Energy Management and Operation Optimization of Seaport Microgrids

The growth in maritime logistics especially necessitates a large volume of energy supply to maintain the operation of sea trade avoiding imbalance between the generation and consumption that will cause service interruption. Future projections show an increase in load demand, cost of operation, and environmental issues as the three major concerns of the maritime industry. In order to overcome these challenges, integrating microgrids as an innovative technology in the seaport power system appears to be a vital strategy. It is believed that microgrids enhance seaport operation by providing sustainable, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective energy. Despite the fact that microgrids are well established and widely used in a variety of operations on land, their incorporation into the maritime systems is still limited. The operation of a variety of heavy loads such as all-electric ships, cranes, cold ironing, and buildings infrastructure makes it complicated in coordination and other aspects, which necessitate further research and leave space for improvement. In this project, Energy Management Systems (EMSs) for seaport microgrids will be studied. The operation management problem will be formulated in the form of a multi-objective optimization problem for minimizing fossil fuel consumption and seaport microgrids emission while maximizing the economic profit. The EMS will be designed together with forecasting techniques regarding the load demand behavior towards uncertainty. To verify the effectiveness of the research outcome, simulation studies will be carried out by MATLAB/Simulink and GAMS. The outcome of this project is expected to solve the vital issues highlighted at seaports towards achieving an efficient and sustainable power system in the future maritime industry.