Smart High Power Charging Networks and Optimal Control Mechanism for Electric Ships

On commercial ports, during loading/unloading on cruise, carrier, container, or tanker, its diesel engine creates pollution. Therefore, in ports, shore-to-ship power (Cold Ironing) supply is an alternative way to overcome the pollution issue at shipyards. However, different ships of different countries and different companies require different types of power with different electrical connections, such as ac power with 50 Hz and 3-phase 3-wire connection, ac power with 60 Hz and 3-phase 4-wire connection, ac power with 50 Hz and 1-phase 2-wire connection, dc power, etc. The ship's power requirements are always in the megawatt range and its required potentials are in the kilovolt range. Therefore, in this article, a smart high power charging network and its control mechanism are developed for cold ironing on the ports, which is capable of serving almost all types of power with different types of power supply network. This developed supply system is capable of providing ac power, dc power, 50 Hz frequency, 60 Hz frequency, single phase, three phases, 3 wire, 4 wire, and 5 wire networks, different ac, dc voltages, etc. The capability of the developed smart power network is validated for different types of ships and vessels, on the simulation platform as well as through experimentation on real-time hardware-in-the-loop. The test results on both the platforms satisfactorily demonstrate the proposed power network and control scheme.