Energy Harvesting from Harbor Cranes with Flywheel Energy Storage Systems

Seaports are specifically designed for trading purposes. They are equipped with facilities for handling industrial and commercial goods as well as raw materials stored in containers. These facilities are often based on diesel cranes, which are noisy and produce air pollution. A possible solution to address this problem is replacing the diesel-power cranes with the electric ones. This idea, however, demands a high power connection to the grid in the seaport. This paper presents a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution based on an electrical flywheel system to reduce electricity consumption from the electrical power network while improving system efficiency by using already existing technologies. Besides, this study presents a new method for controlling electrical drives using flywheel energy storage systems in harbor crane applications by exploiting the energy harvested from the cranes. The system model, including the electrical grid, cranes, power electronic drives, and flywheels as energy storages, is presented and an effective control methodology is developed. Simulation results of a practical crane system are presented and discussed. Practical lab-scale setup is also built and tested. The results have shown that by using the proposed method, the energy can be effectively harvested from the crane into the flywheel energy storage system during its operation, which significantly enhances the harbor power system efficiency as well as supply quality.